WBCHSE HS Anthropology flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Holism in anthropology

The principle that human biological and cultural traits must be studied as interlinked parts of a whole, so that economy, kinship, religion and ecology are analysed together rather than in isolation.

Emic and etic perspectives

Emic describes a community's own categories and meanings; etic describes the analyst's external, comparative categories. Sound ethnography reports both and explains their divergence.

Cultural relativism

A methodological stance holding that beliefs and practices should be understood within their own cultural context before judgement. It is a research principle, not a claim that all practices are equally acceptable.

Ethnocentrism

Judging another culture by the standards of one's own, often treating one's own practices as normal and superior. It distorts description and was a major target of early anthropological critique.

Participant observation

A fieldwork method in which the researcher lives among a community for an extended period, learns its language, and takes part in daily activities while recording systematic observations.

Bipedal skeletal markers

Features indicating habitual upright walking: anteriorly placed foramen magnum, short broad pelvis, valgus knee, arched foot with non-opposable big toe, and an S-shaped vertebral column.

Primates

A mammalian order with grasping hands and feet, nails instead of claws, opposable thumbs, stereoscopic colour vision, reduced olfaction, large brains and long juvenile dependency.

Oldowan industry

The earliest stone tool tradition, roughly 2.6 to 1.6 million years ago, consisting of simple cores and sharp flakes struck with a hammerstone, associated with early Homo.

Homo erectus

An extinct hominin with larger brain than earlier forms, smaller teeth, long legs and a projecting brow; associated with Acheulian handaxes, fire use and dispersal out of Africa.

Clines in human variation

Gradual geographic changes in gene frequencies or traits, such as skin pigmentation correlated with ultraviolet radiation. Clinal traits do not sort populations into discrete biological races.

Sickle-cell adaptation

A genetic polymorphism in which heterozygotes for the sickle haemoglobin allele have some protection against malaria, maintaining the allele at high frequency in malarial regions.

Levallois technique

A Middle Palaeolithic prepared-core method in which a core is shaped so that a single blow detaches a predetermined flake of controlled size and form.

Microliths

Small geometric stone tools such as lunates, triangles and trapezes, characteristic of Mesolithic assemblages and often hafted as composite tools for hunting and fishing.

Law of superposition

The stratigraphic principle that in undisturbed deposits lower layers are older than upper layers, providing the basis for relative dating of artefacts and features.

Radiocarbon dating

An absolute method measuring the decay of carbon-14 in organic remains such as charcoal, bone or shell, useful to roughly fifty thousand years and requiring tree-ring calibration.

Neolithic Revolution

The transition from hunting-gathering to agriculture, animal domestication and settled village life, marked by ground stone tools, pottery, weaving and storage, beginning in West Asia around ten thousand years ago.

Bridewealth

Goods or livestock transferred from the groom's kin to the bride's kin at marriage, often legitimising the union and compensating the bride's family for loss of her labour.

Cross-cousin marriage

Marriage between the children of siblings of opposite sex, that is, a man with his mother's brother's daughter or father's sister's daughter; a preferred form in parts of South India.

Unilineal descent

Recruitment to a descent group through one sex only, either patrilineal or matrilineal, producing lineages and clans whose members trace connection to a known or claimed ancestor.

Rites of passage

Ceremonies marking transitions between social statuses, analysed by Van Gennep as having three phases: separation, liminality and incorporation into the new status.

Imitative and contagious magic

Frazer's two principles of magic: imitative magic acts on the basis of similarity between objects, while contagious magic acts through objects once in contact with the person.

Kinship terminology systems

Named patterns classifying relatives, such as Eskimo, Hawaiian, Iroquois, Omaha, Crow and Sudanese, distinguished by whether they merge or separate generations, sides and lineal from collateral kin.

Scheduled Tribes criteria

Constitutional category under Article 342; the Lokur Committee criteria include primitive traits, distinctive culture, geographical isolation, shyness of contact and general backwardness.

Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups

A sub-category of Scheduled Tribes identified by pre-agricultural technology, low literacy, economic backwardness and declining or stagnant population; seventy-five such groups are recognised nationally.

Khasi social organisation

A north-eastern community with matrilineal descent and usually matrilocal residence, where clan membership and often property pass through the mother's line while political office is male.

Birhor

A small hunting-gathering and rope-making tribal community of Jharkhand and West Bengal, recognised as a Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Group with declining population and low literacy.

Toda

A pastoral tribal community of the Nilgiri hills in Tamil Nadu, known for buffalo herding, barrel-vaulted huts, sacred dairy temples and endogamous clan organisation.

Tribal Sub-Plan

A planning strategy introduced in 1974 channelling development funds to areas with significant tribal populations, aimed at closing infrastructure and income gaps.

PESA Act 1996

The Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) Act giving Gram Sabhas in Fifth Schedule areas special powers over land, resources and development decisions.

Forest Rights Act 2006

Legislation recognising individual and community forest rights of forest-dwelling Scheduled Tribes and other traditional dwellers, requiring Gram Sabha consent for diversion of forest land.

Medical pluralism

The coexistence and combined use of multiple healing systems, such as biomedicine, Ayurveda and folk or religious healing, within one community or by a single patient.

Cephalic index

A craniometric measure calculated as head breadth divided by head length multiplied by one hundred, used to describe head shape in anthropometric surveys.

Genealogical method

A fieldwork technique recording kin connections through pedigrees and symbols for marriage, descent and residence, used to map social structure and inheritance patterns.