BARBARA D. MILLER
“Cultural anthropology is exciting because it CONNECTS with everything, from FOOD to ART. And it can help prevent or SOLVE world problems related to social inequality and injustice.”
Barbara Miller is Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, and Director of the Culture in Global Affairs (CIGA) Research and Policy Program, at The George Washington University. She received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Syracuse University in 1978. Before coming to GW in 1994, she taught at the University of Rochester, SUNY Cortland, Ithaca College, Cornell University, and the University of Pittsburgh. For thirty years, Barbara’s research has focused mainly on gender-based inequalities in India, especially the nutritional and medical neglect of daughters in northern regions of the country. In addition, she has conducted research on culture and rural development in Bangladesh, on low-income household dynamics in Jamaica, and on Hindu adolescents in Pittsburgh. Her current interests include continued research on gender inequalities in health in South Asia, the role of cultural anthropology in informing policy issues, and cultural heritage and public policy, especially as related to women, children, and other disenfranchised groups. She teaches courses on introductory cultural anthropology, medical anthropology, development anthropology, culture and population, health and development in South Asia, and migration and mental health. In addition to many journal articles and book chapters, she has published several books: The Endangered Sex: Neglect of Female Children in Rural North India, 2nd ed. (Oxford University Press, 1997), an edited volume, Sex and Gender Hierarchies (Cambridge University Press, 1993), a co-edited volume with Alf Hiltebeitel, Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures (SUNY Press, 1998), and Cultural Anthropology, 3rd ed. (Allyn & Bacon, 2005).
BERNARD WOOD
“The BEST THING about science is being able to COLLABORATE with other scientists.”
Bernard Wood is the Henry R. Luce Professor of Human Origins in the Department of Anthropology at The George Washington University and Adjunct Senior Scientist at the National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian Institution. He served as founding Director of the Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology at The George Washington University. A medically qualified paleoanthropologist, he practiced briefly as a surgeon before moving into full-time academic life in 1972. He earned a Ph.D. and D.Sc. from The University of London. He has taught at The University of London and The University of Liverpool. In 1995 he was appointed Dean of The University of Liverpool Medical School where he served until moving to Washington in 1997. He teaches a problem-based learning seminar for first-year undergraduates, courses on the fossil evidence for human evolution, evolutionary anatomy, and research methods, as well as teaching anatomy in the GW medical school. In 1968, when a medical student, Bernard joined Richard Leakey’s first expedition to what was then called Lake Rudolf, and he has remained associated with that research group and pursued research in paleoanthropology ever since. His research centers on the reconstruction of human evolutionary history by developing and improving the analysis of the hominid fossil record. A “splitter,” his interests include distinguishing between intraspecific and interspecific variation in order to devise sound
taxonomic hypotheses, refinement of cladistic techniques for the recovery of phylogenetic information, reconstruction of early hominin function such as chewing and locomotion, and exploration of methods for studying the evolution of human growth and development. Bernard’s books include the definitive monograph on the cranial remains from the Koobi Fora site. He regularly publishes journal articles, book reviews, and essays.
ANDREW BALKANSKY
“Archaeology means I get to PLAY in the DIRT for a LIVING. It’s the next best thing to being a professional baseball player.”
Andrew Balkansky is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He earned his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1997. From 1998 to 2002, he was Assistant Professor of Anthropology at The George Washington University, where he taught courses on introductory anthropology, Mesoamerican archaeology, and ethics and intellectual property rights. Among other courses that Andrew teaches in his current position at SIU is an introductory course in four-field anthropology. An anthropological archaeologist, Andrew has been conducting fieldwork in Southern Mexico for the past ten years in order to illuminate the evolution of complex societies. His current field project is the excavation of a site called Tayata that dates between 1300 to 300 BCE, the period immediately prior to the urban revolution and a time about which little is known. His publications include journal articles, chapters and book reviews, and the monograph The Sola Valley and the Monte Albán State: A Study of Zapotec Imperial Expansion, published by the
Museum of Anthropology at the University of Michigan in 2002.
JULIO MERCADER
“Being an archaeologist means I get to go to the FIELD, gather NEW DATA, and ANALYZE it.”
Julio Mercader is a Canada Research Chair and Assistant Professor in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Calgary, Canada. He holds a simultaneous appointment as Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at The George Washington University and at the Smithsonian Institution. He earned a Ph.D. from Universidad Complutense de Madrid in 1997 and was subsequently awarded a joint postdoctoral research fellowship with The George Washington University and the Smithsonian Institution. His teaching includes courses on African archaeology, hominoid behavior, and European prehistory. He has conducted fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Cameroon, and Mozambique.
Julio’s recent publications include the edited book Under the Canopy: The Archaeology of the Tropical Rain Forests, published by Rutgers University Press in 2003. In 2003, he received a grant from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Canada Research Chairs Program to build the newly created Tropical Archaeology Laboratoy at the University of Calgary, which he directs.
MELISSA PANGER
“Being a primatologist gives me opportunities to TRAVEL, do RESEARCH with fascinating animals, get to KNOW people in different cultures, and help preserve
endangered primate species.”
Melissa Panger is a wildlife biologist in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and holds a simultaneous appointment as Research Associate in the Department of Anthropology at The George Washington University. She earned her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley in 1997. From 2000 to 2003, she was an NSF IGERT postdoctoral research fellow with the Hominid Paleobiology Program at The George Washington University. During much of that period, she was also Assistant Professorial Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and taught courses on primatology and biological anthropology. She has conducted field research on nonhuman primates in Côte d’Ivoire, Panama, Costa Rica, and Florida. Melissa is the recipient of many grants and scholarships, and she has published widely. Most recently, she is one of the editors of a book entitled Primates in Perspective, to be published by Oxford University Press.
Each chapter begins with “The Big Questions” and concludes with “The Big Questions Revisited,” “Key Concepts,” and “Suggested Readings.”
Preface.
About the Authors.
I. INTRODUCING THE STUDY OF HUMANITY.
1. Anthropology: The Study of Humanity.
Introducing Anthropology.
Anthropology’s Four Fields.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: What Is Europe?
Anthropology in the “Real World.”
LESSONS APPLIED: Archaeology Findings Increase Food Production in Bolivia.
2. Culture and Diversity.
The Concept of Culture.
Multiple Cultural Worlds.
LESSONS APPLIED: Historical Archaeology and the Story of the Northern Cheyenne Outbreak of 1879.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Elderly Females Take the Lead in Baboon Societies.
Contemporary Debates about Culture.
CRITICAL THINKING: Adolescent Stress: Biologically Determined or Culturally Constructed?
3. Science, Biology, and Evolution.
Science and the Tree of Life
CRITICAL THINKING: Classification: Phenotype versus Molecules.
Evolution Explains the Tree of Life and Humanity’s Place in It.
LESSONS APPLIED: Applying Science to the Ethical Treatment of Nonhuman Primates.
How Evolution Works.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Breeding and Culture in the “Sport of Kings”
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Using DNA Evidence to Trace the Origins of the Indigenous People of the Andaman Islands.
4. Research Methods in Anthropology.
Studying Humanity’s Past
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Preserving and Studying Egyptian Mummy Tissue for Clues about Ancient Disease.
LESSONS APPLIED: Defining Guidelines Regarding the Chemical Contamination of Native American Objects.
Studying Contemporary Humanity.
CRITICAL THINKING: Missing Women in the Trobriand Islands.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Visual Anthropology Methods for All Four Fields.
Research Challenges.
II. BIOLOGICAL AND CULTURAL EVOLUTION.
5. The Nonhuman Primates.
The Primates.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Using Fecal Samples to Study the Effect of Female Hormones on the Behavior of Free-Ranging Spider Monkeys.
CRITICAL THINKING: Infanticide in Primates and the Sexual Selection Hypothesis.
Varieties of Primates.
Nonuman Primates: Windows to Humanity’s Past Face a Fragile Future
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Learning about Chimpanzee Tool Use through Archaeology
LESSONS APPLIED: Using Primatology Data for Primate Conservation Programs
6. The Earliest Human Ancestors.
Finding and Interpreting Hominin Fossils
LESSONS APPLIED: Paleoanthropologists Advocate for Museums in Africa
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Reconstructing Whole Fossils from Fragments.
The Early Hominins
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Cultural Variations on the Narrative of Human Origins and Evolution.
CRITICAL THINKING: “Lumpers” and “Splitters.”
Early Hominin Adaptations.
7. Emergence and Evolution of Archaic Homo.
The First Humans.
CRITICAL THINKING: What Is Really in the Toolbox?
Archaic Homo Moves Out of Africa.
LESSONS APPLIED: Anthropologists Advocate for World Heritage Status for Atapuerca, Spain.
Behavioral and Cultural Evolution
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Recovering Mammalian DNA from Neanderthal Stone Tools
CROSSING THE FIELDS: From Kanzi to Olduvai, But Not Quite.
8. Modern Humans: Origins, Migrations, and Transitions.
The Origin of Modern Humans
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Cultural Clues from South Africa about Modern Human Diet.
Modern Humans during the Upper Paleolithic
LESSONS APPLIED: Helping to Resolve Conflicts about Repainting Australian Indigenous Cave Art.
CRITICAL THINKING: Unfair to Neanderthals?
Transitions during the Holocene Era
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Linguistic Anthropology Provides Insights into the Bantu Expansion.
9. The Neolithic and Urban Revolutions.
The Neolithic Revolution and the Beginnings of Settled Life
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Reconstructing Prehistoric Diets during the Early Neolithic in Denmark.
Civilization: The Urban Revolution, States and Empires
CROSSING THE FIELDS: A Theory from Cultural Anthropology about How Early States Formed.
LESSONS APPLIED: Archaeologists, Government, and Communities Learning to Work Together in Mexico
CRITICAL THINKING: Kennewick Man and Native American Reburial
Lessons from the Neolithic and Later Times about Our World.
III. CONTEMPORARY HUMAN SOCIAL VARIATION.
10. Contemporary Human Biological Diversity.
Contemporary Human Genetic Variation.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Ethics in Genetics Diversity Research.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Popular Opinion in Iceland on the National Human Genome Project.
Contemporary Human Physical Variation.
Urban Life’s Challenges to Human Biology and Health.
CRITICAL THINKING: Lessons from the 1865 Cholera Epidemic in Gibraltar.
LESSONS APPLIED: Fruits ‘R’ Us: A Participatory Action Research Project to Improve Nutrition among Young in West Philadelphia
11. Economic Systems.
Production
LESSONS APPLIED: The Global Network of Indigenous Knowledge Resource Centers.
Mode of Consumption and Exchange.
CRITICAL THINKING: Can the Internet Create Responsible Consumers?
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Linking the Gender Division of Labor to Diet and Growth.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Studying Children’s Food Stealing.
Globalization and Changing Economies.
12. Reproduction and Human Development.
Modes of Reproduction.
Culture and Fertility.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Taking Gender into Account When Surveying Sexual Behavior.
Personality, Human Development, and the Life Cycle.
LESSONS APPLIED: The Role of Cultural Brokerage in the Newborn Nursery.
CRITICAL THINKING: Cultural Relativism and Female Genital Cutting.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Menopause, Grandmothering, and Human Evolution.
13. Illness and Healing.
Ethnomedicine.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Linguistic Anthropology and the Medical Interview.
CRITICAL THINKING: Why Do People Eat Dirt?
Theoretical Approaches in Medical Anthropology.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: A Quantitative Comparison of Health Problems of Pastoralist and Settled Turkana Men.
Globalization and Change.
14. Kinship and Domestic Life.
The Study of Kinship.
CRITICAL THINKING: How Bilineal Is American Kinship?
Households and Domestic Life.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: What Burials Reveal about Household Members’ Status: The Prehistoric Oneota of Wisconsin.
LESSONS APPLIED: Ethnography to Prevent Wife Abuse in Rural Kentucky
Changing Kinship and Household Dynamics.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Love Letters and Courtship in Nepal Changing Households.
15. Social Groups and Social Stratification.
Social Groups
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Multi-sited Research to Study the Breast Cancer Movement in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Social Stratification.
CRITICAL THINKING: What’s Missing from This Picture?
CROSSING THE FIELDS: The Role of Archaeology in an African American Cultural Heritage Project.
Civil Society: Between Groups and Government.
LESSONS APPLIED: Cultural Anthropology and Community Activism in Papua New Guinea.
16. Political and Legal Systems.
Politics, Political Organization, and Leadership Politics and Culture.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Life Histories Provide Clues about Women’s Political Socialization in Korea.
Social Order and Social Conflict.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Postconflict Reconciliation through Making Amends among Nonhuman Primates.
LESSONS APPLIED: Legal Anthropologist Advises Resistance to “Coercive Harmony”
CRITICAL THINKING: The Yanomami: The “Fierce People”?
Change in Political and Legal Systems.
IV. COMMUNICATION AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING.
17. Communication.
Human Verbal Language.
LESSONS APPLIED: Anthropology and Public Understanding of the Language and Culture of People Who Are Deaf.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Dealing with the “Observer’s Paradox.”
Language, Thought, and Society.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: An Evolutionary Perspective on Baby Talk.
CRITICAL THINKING: A Tale of Two News Stories.
Beyond Words: Human Paralanguage.
18. Religion.
Religion in Comparative Perspective.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: The Prehistoric Use of Red Ochre in Southern Africa and the Origins of Ritual.
LESSONS APPLIED: Aboriginal Women’s Culture, Sacred Site Protection, and the Anthropologist as Expert Witness
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Studying Birth Rituals in Indonesia
CRITICAL THINKING: Why Did the Aztecs Practice Human Sacrifice and Cannibalism?
World Religions.
Directions of Change.
19. Expressive Culture.
Art and Culture.
CRITICAL THINKING: Probing the Categories of Art.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Without Participation, There Is No Meaning.
Play, Leisure, and Culture.
Change in Expressive Culture.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Applying Cladistic Analysis to Change in Oriental Carpets.
LESSONS APPLIED: A Strategy for the World Bank on Cultural Heritage.
V. FORCES OF CHANGE AND HUMANITY’S FUTURE.
20. People on the Move.
Categories of Migration.
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Biological Anthropologists Reveal Health Effects of Immigration to the United States.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: Studying a Virtual Community
The New Immigrants to the United States and Canada.
Migration Policies and Politics in a Globalizing World.
CRITICAL THINKING: Haitian Cane Cutters in the Dominican Republic—A Case of Structure or Human Agency?
LESSONS APPLIED: Studying Pastoralists’ Movements for Risk Assessment and Service Delivery.
21. Development Anthropology.
Two Processes of Cultural Change.
CRITICAL THINKING: Social Effects of the Green Revolution
LESSONS APPLIED: The Saami, Snowmobiles, and the Need for Social Impact Analysis.
Approaches to Development.
METHODS CLOSE-UP: The Importance of Teamwork in Development Research.
Emerging Issues in Development
CROSSING THE FIELDS: Human Evolutionist Supports the Repatriation of Saartje Baartman’s Remains to South Africa.
Glossary.
References.
Index.