Internet Exercises

This site is available to anyone with an interest in conversations about anthropology.

Log onto the site and look at the archives for three selected time periods. Compare the topics being discussed. How do these topics relate to theoretical issues and methodological questions covered in Chapter 1? Can you identify some questions that continue to be debated and discussed over time? Which topics discussed do you find the most interesting?

Allows you to search for any author, topic or cultural group written about in American Anthropologist, the journal of the American Anthropological Association, from 1888 through 2000.

Log onto the site and pick one culture group that interests you, for example, the Maya or Hopi. Some things you might want to note in the resulting list:

• what issues were prominent in the late nineteenth century?
• early twentieth century?
• late twentieth century?
• what might account for some of the changes you see in the discussion of a particular culture group over the two centuries of publication of this journal?

You can do the same kind of searching by author. For example, enter Franz Boas and look at the wide variety of subjects he has written about. Then enter a more contemporary anthropologist, such as Clifford Geertz. What observations can you make about the breadth of anthropological subjects one anthropologist covered in the early twentieth century vs. the late twentieth century? What does this suggest about contemporary anthropology as a discipline?

This site provides a wide variety of information about chimpanzees.

Use this site to compare chimpanzee behavior and communication with human culture and human language. Concentrate on chimpanzee capacity for communication and use of language. How are chimpanzee and human capacities for communication similar? How are they different?