| absolute dating | Dating techniques that establish dates in numbers or ranges of numbers; examples include the radiometric methods of 14C, K/A, 238U, TL, and ESR dating.
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| acculturation | The exchange of cultural features that results when groups come into continuous firsthand contact; the cultural patterns of either or both groups may be changed, but the groups remain distinct.
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| Acheulian | Derived from the French village of St. Acheul, where these tools were first identified; Lower Paleolithic tool tradition associated with H. erectus.
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| achieved status | Social status that comes through talents, choices, actions, and accomplishments, rather than ascription.
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| adapids | Early (Eocene) primate family ancestral to lemurs and lorises.
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| adaptive | Favored by natural selection in a particular environment.
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| aesthetics | Appreciation of the qualities perceived in works of art; the mind and emotions in relation to a sense of beauty.
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| affinals | Relatives by marriage, whether of lineals (e.g., son's wife) or collaterals (e.g., sister's husband).
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| age set | Group uniting all men or women born during a certain time span; this group controls property and often has political and military functions.
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| agriculture | Nonindustrial systems of plant cultivation characterized by continuous and intensive use of land and labor.
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| allele | A biochemical variant of a particular gene.
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| Allen's rule | Rule stating that the relative size of protruding body parts (such as ears, tails, bills, fingers, toes, and limbs) tends to increase in warmer climates.
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| ambilineal | Principle of descent that does not automatically exclude the children of either sons or daughters.
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| analogies | Similarities arising as a result of similar selective forces; traits produced by convergent evolution.
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| anatomically modern humans (AMHs) | Including the Cro-Magnons of Europe (31,000 B.P.) and the older fossils from Skh¯ul (100,000), Qafzeh (92,000), Herto, and other sites; continue through the present; also known as H. sapiens sapiens.
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| animism | Belief in souls or doubles.
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| anthropoids | Members of Anthropoidea, one of the two suborders of primates; monkeys, apes, and humans are anthropoids.
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| anthropology and education | Anthropological research in classrooms, homes, and neighborhoods, viewing students as total cultural creatures whose enculturation and attitudes toward education belong to a larger context that includes family, peers, and society.
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| anthropology | The study of the human species and its immediate ancestors.
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| anthropometry | The measurement of human body parts and dimensions, including skeletal parts (osteometry).
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| antimodernism | The rejection of the modern in favor of what is perceived as an earlier, purer, and better way of life.
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| applied anthropology | The application of anthropological data, perspectives, theory, and methods to identify, assess, and solve contemporary social problems.
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| arboreal | Tree-dwelling; arboreal primates include gibbons, New World monkeys, and many Old World monkeys.
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| arboreal theory | Theory that the primates evolved by adapting to life high up in the trees, where visual abilities would have been favored over the sense of smell, and grasping hands and feet would have been used for movement along branches.
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| archaeological anthropology | The study of human behavior and cultural patterns and processes through the culture's material remains.
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| archaic Homo sapiens | Early H. sapiens, consisting of the Neandertals of Europe and the Middle East, the Neandertal-like hominids of Africa and Asia, and the immediate ancestors of all these hominids; lived from about 300,000 to 28,000 B.P.
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| art | An object or event that evokes an aesthetic reaction—a sense of beauty, appreciation, harmony, and/or pleasure; the quality, production, expression, or realm of what is beautiful or of more than ordinary significance; the class of objects subject to aesthetic criteria.
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| arts | The arts include the visual arts, literature (written and oral), music, and theater arts.
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| ascribed status | Social status (e.g., race or gender) that people have little or no choice about occupying.
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| assimilation | The process of change that a minority group may experience when it moves to a country where another culture dominates; the minority is incorporated into the dominant culture to the point that it no longer exists as a separate cultural unit.
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| australopithecines | Varied group of Pliocene- Pleistocene hominids. The term is derived from their former classification as members of a distinct subfamily, the Australopithecinae; now they are distinguished from Homo only at the genus level.
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| Aztec | Last independent state in the Valley of Mexico; capital was Tenochtitlan. Thrived between A.D. 1325 and the Spanish Conquest in 1520.
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| balanced polymorphism | Two or more forms, such as alleles of the same gene, that maintain a constant frequency in a population from generation to generation.
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| balanced reciprocity | See generalized reciprocity.
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| band | Basic unit of social organization among foragers. A band includes fewer than 100 people; it often splits up seasonally.
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| behavioral ecology | Study of the evolutionary basis of social behavior.
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| Bergmann's rule | Rule stating that the smaller of two bodies similar in shape has more surface area per unit of weight and therefore can dissipate heat more efficiently; hence, large bodies tend to be found in colder areas and small bodies in warmer ones.
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| bifurcate collateral kinship terminology | Kinship terminology employing separate terms for M, F, MB, MZ, FB, and FZ.
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| bifurcate merging kinship terminology | Kinship terminology in which M and MZ are called by the same term, F and FB are called by the same term, and MB and FZ are called by different terms.
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| big man | Regional figure found among tribal horticulturalists and pastoralists. The big man occupies no office but creates his reputation through entrepreneurship and generosity to others. Neither his wealth nor his position passes to his heirs.
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| bilateral kinship calculation | A system in which kinship ties are calculated equally through both sexes: mother and father, sister and brother, daughter and son, and so on.
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| biochemical genetics | Field that studies structure, function, and changes in genetic material— aka molecular genetics.
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| biocultural | Referring to the inclusion and combination (to solve a common problem) of both biological and cultural approaches—one of anthropology's hallmarks.
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| biological anthropology | The study of human biological variation in time and space; includes evolution, genetics, growth and development, and primatology.
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| bipedal | Two-footed; upright bipedalism is the characteristic human mode of locomotion.
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| Black English Vernacular (BEV) | A rule-governed dialect of American English with roots in southern English. BEV is spoken by African- American youth and by many adults in their casual, intimate speech—sometimes called "ebonics."
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| blade tool | The basic Upper Paleolithic tool type, hammered off a prepared core.
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| bone biology | The study of bone as a biological tissue, including its genetics; cell structure; growth, development, and decay; and patterns of movement (biomechanics).
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| bourgeoisie | One of Marx's opposed classes; owners of the means of production (factories, mines, large farms, and other sources of subsistence).
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| brachiation | Under-the-branch swinging; characteristic of gibbons, siamangs, and some New World monkeys.
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| bridewealth | See progeny price.
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| broad-spectrum revolution | Period beginning around 15,000 B.P. in the Middle East and 12,000 B.P. in Europe, during which a wider range, or broader spectrum, of plant and animal life was hunted, gathered, collected, caught, and fished; revolutionary because it led to food production.
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| bronze | An alloy of arsenic and copper or tin and copper.
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| call systems | Systems of communication among nonhuman primates, composed of a limited number of sounds that vary in intensity and duration. Tied to environmental stimuli.
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| capital | Wealth or resources invested in business, with the intent of producing a profit.
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| capitalist world economy | The single world system, which emerged in the 16th century, committed to production for sale, with the object of maximizing profits rather than supplying domestic needs.
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| cargo cults | Postcolonial, acculturative religious movements, common in Melanesia, that attempt to explain European domination and wealth and to achieve similar success magically by mimicking European behavior.
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| caste system | Closed, hereditary system of stratification, often dictated by religion; hierarchical social status is ascribed at birth, so that people are locked into their parents' social position.
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| catastrophism | View that extinct species were destroyed by fires, floods, and other catastrophes. After each destructive event, God created again, leading to contemporary species.
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| catharsis | Intense emotional release.
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| chiefdom | (1) A ranked society in which relations among villages as well as among individuals are unequal, with smaller villages under the authority of leaders in larger villages; has a two-level settlement hierarchy. (2) Form of sociopolitical organization intermediate between the tribe and the state; kin-based with differential access to resources and a permanent political structure.
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| chromosomes | Basic genetic units, occurring in matching (homologous) pairs; lengths of DNA made up of multiple genes.
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| civil society | Voluntary collective action around shared interests, goals, and values. Encompasses such organizations as NGOs, registered charities, community groups, women's organizations, faith-based and professional groups, trade unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions, and advocacy groups.
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| clan | Unilineal descent group based on stipulated descent.
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| cline | A gradual shift in gene frequencies between neighboring populations.
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| Clovis tradition | Stone technology based on a projectile point that was fastened to the end of a hunting spear; it flourished between 12,000 and 11,000 B.P. in North America.
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| collateral relative | A genealogical relative who is not in ego's direct line, such as B, Z, FB, or MZ.
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| colonialism | The political, social, economic, and cultural domination of a territory and its people by a foreign power for an extended time.
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| communal religions | In Wallace's typology, these religions have, in addition to shamanic cults, communal cults in which people organize community rituals such as harvest ceremonies and rites of passage.
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| Communism | Spelled with a capital C, a political movement and doctrine seeking to overthrow capitalism and to establish a form of communism such as that which prevailed in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1991.
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| communism | Spelled with a lowercase c, describes a social system in which property is owned by the community and in which people work for the common good.
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| communitas | Intense community spirit, a feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness; characteristic of people experiencing liminality together.
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| complex societies | Nations; large and populous, with social stratification and central governments.
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| convergent evolution | Independent operation of similar selective forces; the process by which analogies are produced.
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| core | Dominant structural position in the world system; consists of the strongest and most powerful states with advanced systems of production.
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| core values | Key, basic, or central values that integrate a culture and help distinguish it from others.
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| correlation | An association between two or more variables such that when one changes (varies), the other(s) also change(s) (covaries); for example, temperature and sweating.
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| creationism | Explanation for the origin of species given in Genesis: God created the species during the original six days of Creation.
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| cross cousins | Children of a brother and a sister.
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| crossing over | During meiosis, the process by which homologous chromosomes intertwine and exchange segments of their DNA.
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| cultivation continuum | A continuum based on the comparative study of nonindustrial cultivating societies in which labor intensity increases and fallowing decreases.
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| cultural anthropology | The study of human society and culture; describes, analyzes, interprets, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences.
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| cultural consultants | Subjects in ethnographic research; people the ethnographer gets to know in the field, who teach him or her about their culture.
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| cultural imperialism | The rapid spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other cultures, which it modifies, replaces, or destroys—usually because of differential economic or political influence.
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| cultural relativism | The position that the values and standards of cultures differ and deserve respect. Extreme relativism argues that cultures should be judged solely by their own standards.
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| cultural resource management (CRM) | The branch of applied archaeology aimed at preserving sites threatened by dams, highways, and other projects.
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| cultural rights | Doctrine that certain rights are vested in identifiable groups, such as religious and ethnic minorities and indigenous societies. Cultural rights include a group's ability to preserve its culture, to raise its children in the ways of its forebears, to continue its language, and not to be deprived of its economic base by the nation-state in which it is located.
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| cultural transmission | A basic feature of language; transmission through learning.
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| culture | Distinctly human; transmitted through learning; traditions and customs that govern behavior and beliefs.
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| cuneiform | Early Mesopotamian writing that used a stylus (writing implement) to write wedge-shaped impressions on raw clay; from the Latin word for wedge.
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| curer | Specialized role acquired through a culturally appropriate process of selection, training, certification, and acquisition of a professional image; the curer is consulted by patients, who believe in his or her special powers, and receives some form of special consideration; a cultural universal.
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| daughter languages | Languages developing out of the same parent language; for example, French and Spanish are daughter languages of Latin.
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| dendrochronology | Or tree-ring dating: a method of absolute dating based on the study and comparison of patterns of tree-ring growth.
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| descent group | A permanent social unit whose members claim common ancestry; fundamental to tribal society.
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| descent | Rule assigning social identity on the basis of some aspect of one's ancestry.
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| development anthropology | The branch of applied anthropology that focuses on social issues in—and the cultural dimension of—economic development.
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| diaspora | The offspring of an area who have spread to many lands.
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| differential access | Unequal access to resources; basic attribute of chiefdoms and states. Superordinates have favored access to such resources, while the access of subordinates is limited by superordinates.
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| diffusion | Borrowing of cultural traits between societies, either directly or through intermediaries.
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| diglossia | The existence of "high" (formal) and "low" (informal, familial) dialects of a single language, such as German.
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| discrimination | Policies and practices that harm a group and its members.
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| disease | A scientifically identified health threat caused by a bacterium, virus, fungus, parasite, or other pathogen.
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| displacement | A basic feature of language; the ability to speak of things and events that are not present.
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| domestic-public dichotomy | Contrast between women's role in the home and men's role in public life, with a corresponding social devaluation of women's work and worth.
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| dominant | Allele that masks another allele in a heterozygote.
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| dowry | A marital exchange in which the wife's group provides substantial gifts to the husband's family.
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| dryopithecids | Zoological ape family living in Europe during the middle and late Miocene; probably includes the common ancestor of the lesser apes (gibbons and siamangs) and the great apes.
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| economizing | The rational allocation of scarce means (or resources) to alternative ends (or uses); often considered the subject matter of economics.
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| economy | A population's system of production, distribution, and consumption of resources.
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| egalitarian society | A type of society, most typically found among hunter-gatherers, that lacks status distinctions except for those based on age, gender, and individual qualities, talents, and achievements.
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| ego | Latin for I. In kinship charts, the point from which one views an egocentric genealogy.
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| emic | The research strategy that focuses on local explanations and criteria of significance.
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| empire | Amature, territorially large, and expansive, state; empires are typically multiethnic, multilinguistic, and more militaristic, with a better developed bureaucracy than earlier states.
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| enculturation | The social process by which culture is learned and transmitted across the generations.
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| endogamy | Rule or practice of marriage between people of the same social group.
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| equity, increased | A reduction in absolute poverty and a fairer (more even) distribution of wealth.
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| estrus | Period of maximum sexual receptivity in female baboons, chimpanzees, and other primates, signaled by vaginal area swelling and coloration.
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| ethnic group | Group distinguished by cultural similarities (shared among members of that group) and differences (between that group and others); ethnic-group members share beliefs, customs, and norms, and, often, a common language, religion, history, geography, and kinship.
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| ethnicity | Identification with, and feeling part of, an ethnic group, and exclusion from certain other groups because of this affiliation.
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| ethnocentrism | The tendency to view one's own culture as best and to judge the behavior and beliefs of culturally different people by one's own standards.
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| ethnography | Field work in a particular culture.
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| ethnology | Cross-cultural comparison; the comparative study of ethnographic data, society, and culture.
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| ethnomusicology | The comparative study of the musics of the world and of music as an aspect of culture and society.
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| ethnosemantics | The study of lexical (vocabulary) contrasts and classifications in various languages.
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| etic | The research strategy that emphasizes the ethnographer's rather than the locals' explanations, categories, and criteria of significance.
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| eugenics | Controversial movement aimed at genetic improvement by encouraging the reproduction of individuals with favored features and discouraging that of individuals with features deemed undesirable.
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| evolution | Belief that species arose from others through a long and gradual process of transformation, or descent with modification.
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| excavation | Digging through the layers of deposits that make up an archaeological or fossil site.
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| exogamy | Rule requiring people to marry outside their own group.
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| expressive culture | The arts; people express themselves creatively in dance, music, song, painting, sculpture, pottery, cloth, storytelling, verse, prose, drama, and comedy.
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| extended family household | Expanded household including three or more generations.
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| extradomestic | Outside the home; within or pertaining to the public domain.
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| family of orientation | Nuclear family in which one is born and grows up.
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| family of procreation | Nuclear family established when one marries and has children.
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| fiscal | Pertaining to finances and taxation.
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| focal vocabulary | A set of words and distinctions that are particularly important to certain groups (those with particular foci of experience or activity), such as types of snow to Eskimos or skiers.
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| folk | Of the people; originally coined for European peasants; refers to the art, music, and lore of ordinary people, as contrasted with the "high" art or "classic" art of the European elites.
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| food production | Cultivation of plants and domestication (stockbreeding) of animals; first developed 10,000 to 12,000 years ago.
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| food production | Human control over the reproduction of plants and animals.
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| fossils | Remains (e.g., bones), traces, or impressions (e.g., footprints) of ancient life.
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| functional explanation | Explanation that establishes a correlation or interrelationship between social customs. When customs are functionally interrelated, if one changes, the others also change.
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| fundamentalism | Describes antimodernist movements in various religions. Fundamentalists assert an identity separate from the larger religious group from which they arose; they advocate strict fidelity to the "true" religious principles on which the larger religion was founded.
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| gender roles | The tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex.
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| gender stereotypes | Oversimplified but strongly held ideas about the characteristics of males and females.
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| gender stratification | Unequal distribution of rewards (socially valued resources, power, prestige, and personal freedom) between men and women, reflecting their different positions in a social hierarchy.
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| gene | Area in a chromosome pair that determines, wholly or partially, a particular biological trait, such as whether one's blood type is A, B, or O.
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| gene flow | Exchange of genetic material between populations of the same species through direct or indirect interbreeding.
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| gene pool | All the alleles and genotypes within a breeding population—the "pool" of genetic material available.
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| genealogical method | Procedures by which ethnographers discover and record connections of kinship, descent, and marriage, using diagrams and symbols.
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| general anthropology | The field of anthropology as a whole, consisting of cultural, archaeological, biological, and linguistic anthropology.
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| generality | Culture pattern or trait that exists in some but not all societies.
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| generalized reciprocity | Principle that characterizes exchanges between closely related individuals. As social distance increases, reciprocity becomes balanced and finally negative.
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| generational kinship terminology | Kinship terminology with only two terms for the parental generation, one designating M, MZ, and FZ and the other designating F, FB, and MB.
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| genetic evolution | Change in gene frequency within a breeding population.
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| genitor | Biological father of a child.
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| genotype | An organism's hereditary makeup.
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| gibbons | The smallest apes, natives of Asia; arboreal.
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| glacials | The four or five major advances of continental ice sheets in northern Europe and North America.
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| globalization | The accelerating interdependence of nations in a world system linked economically and through mass media and modern transportation systems.
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| gracile | Opposite of robust; "gracile" indicates that members of A. africanus were a bit smaller and slighter, less robust, than were members of A. robustus.
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| green revolution | Agricultural development based on chemical fertilizers, pesticides, 20th-century cultivation techniques, and new crop varieties such as IR-8 ("miracle rice").
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| Halafian | An early (7500-6500 B.P.) and widespread pottery style, first found in northern Syria; refers to a delicate ceramic style and to the period when the first chiefdoms emerged.
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| head, village | A local leader in a tribal society who has limited authority, leads by example and persuasion, and must be generous.
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| health-care systems | Beliefs, customs, and specialists concerned with ensuring health and preventing and curing illness; a cultural universal.
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| hegemony | As used by Antonio Gramsci, a stratified social order in which subordinates comply with domination by internalizing its values and accepting its "naturalness."
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| heterozygous | Having dissimilar alleles of a given gene.
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| hidden transcript | As used by James Scott, the critique of power by the oppressed that goes on offstage—in private—where the power holders can't see it.
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| Hilly Flanks | Woodland zone that flanks the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the north; zone of wild wheat and barley and of sedentism (settled, nonmigratory life) preceding food production.
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| historical linguistics | Subdivision of linguistics that studies languages over time.
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| holistic | Interested in the whole of the human condition: past, present, and future; biology, society, language, and culture.
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| hominids | Members of the zoological family that includes fossil and living humans; many scientists now include chimpanzees and gorillas in this family.
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| hominoids | Members of the superfamily including humans and all the apes.
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| Homo habilis | Term coined by L. S. B. and Mary Leakey; immediate ancestor of H. erectus; lived from about 2 to 1.7 m.y.a.
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| homologies | Traits that organisms have jointly inherited from a common ancestor.
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| homozygous | Possessing identical alleles of a particular gene.
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| honorific | A term, such as "Mr." or "Lord," used with people, often by being added to their names, to "honor" them.
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| horticulture | Nonindustrial system of plant cultivation in which plots lie fallow for varying lengths of time.
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| human rights | Doctrine that invokes a realm of justice and morality beyond and superior to particular countries, cultures, and religions. Human rights, usually seen as vested in individuals, would include the right to speak freely, to hold religious beliefs without persecution, and not to be murdered, injured, enslaved, or imprisoned without charge.
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| hypervitaminosis D | Condition caused by an excess of vitamin D; calcium deposits build up in the body's soft tissues, and the kidneys may fail; symptoms include gallstones and joint and circulation problems; may affect unprotected lightskinned individuals in the tropics.
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| hypodescent | Rule that automatically places the children of a union or mating between members of different socioeconomic groups in the lessprivileged group.
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| illness | A condition of poor health perceived or felt by an individual.
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| imperialism | A policy of extending the rule of a nation or empire over foreign nations or of taking and holding foreign colonies.
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| incest | Forbidden sexual relations with a close relative.
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| income | Earnings from wages and salaries.
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| independent assortment | Mendel's law of; chromosomes are inherited independently of one another.
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| independent invention | Development of the same cultural trait or pattern in separate cultures as a result of comparable needs, circumstances, and solutions.
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| indigenized | Modified to fit the local culture.
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| indigenous peoples | The original inhabitants of particular territories; often descendants of tribespeople who live on as culturally distinct colonized peoples, many of whom aspire to autonomy.
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| Industrial Revolution | The historic transformation (in Europe, after 1750) of "traditional" into "modern" societies through industrialization of the economy.
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| informed consent | Agreement to take part in research, after the people being studied have been told about that research's purpose, nature, procedures, and potential impact on them.
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| interglacials | Extended warm periods between such major glacials as Riss and Würm.
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| international culture | Cultural traditions that extend beyond national boundaries.
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| intervention philosophy | Guiding principle of colonialism, conquest, missionization, or development; an ideological justification for outsiders to guide native peoples in specific directions.
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| interview schedule | Ethnographic tool for structuring a formal interview. A prepared form (usually printed or mimeographed) that guides interviews with households or individuals being compared systematically. Contrasts with a questionnaire because the researcher has personal contact with the local people and records their answers.
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| IPR | Intellectual property rights, consisting of each society's cultural base—its core beliefs and principles. IPR are claimed as a group right—a cultural right—allowing indigenous groups to control who may know and use their collective knowledge and its applications.
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| key cultural consultant | Person who is an expert on a particular aspect of local life.
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| kinesics | The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and facial expressions.
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| kinship calculation | The system by which people in a particular society reckon kin relationships.
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| language | Human beings' primary means of communication; may be spoken or written; features productivity and displacement and is culturally transmitted.
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| law | A legal code, including trial and enforcement; characteristic of state-organized societies.
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| leveling mechanism | A custom or social action that operates to reduce differences in wealth and thus to bring standouts in line with community norms.
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| levirate | Custom by which a widow marries the brother of her deceased husband.
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| lexicon | Vocabulary; a dictionary containing all the morphemes in a language and their meanings.
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| life history | Of a key consultant or narrator; provides a personal cultural portrait of existence or change in a culture.
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| liminality | The critically important marginal or in-between phase of a rite of passage.
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| lineage | Unilineal descent group based on demonstrated descent.
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| lineal kinship terminology | Parental generation kin terminology with four terms: one for M, one for F, one for FB and MB, and one for MZ and FZ.
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| lineal relative | Any of ego's ancestors or descendants (e.g., parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren) on the direct line of descent that leads to and from ego.
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| linguistic anthropology | The descriptive, comparative, and historical study of language and of linguistic similarities and differences in time, space, and society.
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| longitudinal research | Long-term study of a community, region, society, culture, or other unit, usually based on repeated visits.
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| m.y.a. | Million years ago.
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| macroevolution | Large-scale changes in allele frequencies in a population over a longer time period (than microevolution)—changes that may culminate in the evolution of new species.
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| magic | Use of supernatural techniques to accomplish specific aims.
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| maize | Corn; domesticated in highland Mexico.
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| mana | Sacred impersonal force in Melanesian and Polynesian religions.
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| manioc | Cassava; a tuber domesticated in the South American lowlands.
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| market principle | Profit-oriented principle of exchange that dominates in states, particularly industrial states. Goods and services are bought and sold, and values are determined by supply and demand.
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| mater | Socially recognized mother of a child.
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| matrifocal | Mother-centered; often refers to a household with no resident husband-father.
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| matrilineal descent | Unilineal descent rule in which people join the mother's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
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| matrilocality | Customary residence with the wife's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their mother's community.
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| means (or factors) of production | Land, labor, technology, and capital—major productive resources.
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| medical anthropology | Unites biological and cultural anthropologists in the study of disease, health problems, health-care systems, and theories about illness in different cultures and ethnic groups.
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| meiosis | Special process by which sex cells are produced; four cells are produced from one, each with half the genetic material of the original cell.
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| melanin | Substance manufactured in specialized cells in the lower layers of the epidermis (outer skin layer); melanin cells in dark skin produce more melanin than do those in light skin.
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| Mendelian genetics | Studies ways in which chromosomes transmit genes across the generations.
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| Mesoamerica | Middle America, including Mexico, Guatemala, and Belize.
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| Mesolithic | Middle Stone Age, whose characteristic tool type was the microlith; broad-spectrum economy.
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| Mesopotamia | The area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now southern Iraq and southwestern Iran; location of the first cities and states.
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| metallurgy | Knowledge of the properties of metals, including their extraction and processing and the manufacture of metal tools.
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| microevolution | Small-scale changes in allele frequencies over just a few generations.
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| mitosis | Ordinary cell division; DNA molecules copy themselves, creating two identical cells out of one.
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| mode of production | Way of organizing production— a set of social relations through which labor is deployed to wrest energy from nature by means of tools, skills, and knowledge.
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| molecular anthropology | Genetic analysis, involving comparison of DNA sequences, to determine evolutionary links and distances among species and among ancient and modern populations.
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| monotheism | Worship of an eternal, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent supreme being.
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| morphology | The study of form; used in linguistics (the study of morphemes and word construction) and for form in general—for example, biomorphology relates to physical form.
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| Mousterian | Middle Paleolithic tool-making tradition associated with Neandertals.
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| multiculturalism | The view of cultural diversity in a country as something good and desirable; a multicultural society socializes individuals not only into the dominant (national) culture but also into an ethnic culture.
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| multiregional evolution | Theory that H. erectus gradually evolved into modern H. sapiens in all regions inhabited by humans (Africa, Europe, northern Asia, and Australasia). As the regional populations evolved, gene flow always connected them, and so they always belonged to the same species. This theory opposes replacement models such as the Eve theory.
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| multivariate | Involving multiple factors, causes, or variables.
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| mutation | Change in the DNA molecules of which genes and chromosomes are built.
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| nation | Once a synonym for "ethnic group," designating a single culture sharing a language, religion, history, territory, ancestry, and kinship; now usually a synonym for state or nation-state.
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| national culture | Cultural experiences, beliefs, learned behavior patterns, and values shared by citizens of the same nation.
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| nationalities | Ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status (their own country).
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| nation-state | An autonomous political entity; a country like the United States or Canada.
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| Natufians | Widespread Middle Eastern culture, dated to between 12,500 and 10,500 B.P.; subsisted on intensive wild cereal collecting and gazelle hunting and had year-round villages.
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| natural selection | Originally formulated by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace; the process by which nature selects the forms most fit to survive and reproduce in a given environment, such as the tropics.
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| Neandertals | H. sapiens neanderthalensis, representing an archaic H. sapiens subspecies, lived in Europe and the Middle East between 130,000 and 28,000 B.P.
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| negative reciprocity | See generalized reciprocity.
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| neoliberalism | Revival of Adam Smith's classic economic liberalism, the idea that governments should not regulate private enterprise and that free market forces should rule; a currently dominant intervention philosophy.
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| Neolithic | "New Stone Age," coined to describe techniques of grinding and polishing stone tools; the first cultural period in a region in which the first signs of domestication are present.
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| neolocality | Postmarital residence pattern in which a couple establishes a new place of residence rather than living with or near either set of parents.
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| nomadism, pastoral | Movement throughout the year by the whole pastoral group (men, women, and children) with their animals; more generally, such constant movement in pursuit of strategic resources.
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| office | Permanent political position.
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| Oldowan | Earliest (2 to 2.5 m.y.a.) stone tools; first discovered in 1931 by L. S. B. and Mary Leakey at Olduvai Gorge.
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| Olympian religions | In Wallace's typology, develop with state organization; have full-time religious specialists—professional priesthoods.
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| omomyids | Early (Eocene) primate family found in North America, Europe, and Asia; early omomyids may be ancestral to all anthropoids; later ones may be ancestral to tarsiers.
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| open class system | Stratification system that facilitates social mobility, with individual achievement and personal merit determining social rank.
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| opposable thumb | A thumb that can touch all the other fingers.
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| Out of Africa theory | Theory that a small group of anatomically modern people arose recently, probably in Africa, from which they spread and replaced the native and more archaic populations of other inhabited areas.
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| overinnovation | Characteristic of projects that require major changes in natives' daily lives, especially ones that interfere with customary subsistence pursuits.
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| paleoanthropology | Study of hominid and human life through the fossil record.
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| Paleolithic | Old Stone Age (from Greek roots meaning "old" and "stone"); divided into Lower (early), Middle, and Upper (late).
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| paleontology | Study of ancient life through the fossil record.
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| paleopathology | Study of disease and injury in skeletons from archaeological sites.
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| palynology | Study of ancient plants through pollen samples from archaeological or fossil sites in order to determine a site's environment at the time of occupation.
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| parallel cousins | Children of two brothers or two sisters.
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| particularity | Distinctive or unique culture trait, pattern, or integration.
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| pastoralists | People who use a food-producing strategy of adaptation based on care of herds of domesticated animals.
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| pater | Socially recognized father of a child; not necessarily the genitor.
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| patriarchy | Political system ruled by men in which women have inferior social and political status, including basic human rights.
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| patrilineal descent | Unilineal descent rule in which people join the father's group automatically at birth and stay members throughout life.
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| patrilineal-patrilocal complex | An interrelated constellation of patrilineality, patrilocality, warfare, and male supremacy.
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| patrilocality | Customary residence with the husband's relatives after marriage, so that children grow up in their father's community.
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| peasant | Small-scale agriculturalist living in a state with rent fund obligations.
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| periphery | Weakest structural position in the world system.
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| phenotype | An organism's evident traits, its "manifest biology"—anatomy and physiology.
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| phenotypical adaptation | Adaptive biological changes that occur during the individual's lifetime, made possible by biological plasticity.
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| phoneme | Significant sound contrast in a language that serves to distinguish meaning, as in minimal pairs.
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| phonemics | The study of the sound contrasts (phonemes) of a particular language.
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| phonetics | The study of speech sounds in general; what people actually say in various languages.
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| phonology | The study of sounds used in speech.
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| physical anthropology | See biological anthropology.
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| Pleistocene | Epoch of Homo's appearance and evolution; began 1.8 million years ago; divided into Lower, Middle, and Upper.
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| plural marriage | Any marriage with more than two spouses, a.k.a. polygamy.
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| plural society | A society that combines ethnic contrasts and economic interdependence of the ethnic groups.
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| polyandry | Variety of plural marriage in which a woman has more than one husband.
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| polygyny | Variety of plural marriage in which a man has more than one wife.
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| polytheism | Belief in several deities who control aspects of nature.
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| population genetics | Field that studies causes of genetic variation, maintenance, and change in breeding populations.
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| postcolonial | Referring to interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized (mainly after 1800); more generally, "postcolonial" may be used to signify a position against imperialism and Eurocentrism.
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| postcranium | The area behind or below the head; the skeleton.
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| postmodern | In its most general sense, describes the blurring and breakdown of established canons (rules, standards), categories, distinctions, and boundaries.
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| postmodernism | A style and movement in architecture that succeeded modernism. Compared with modernism, postmodernism is less geometric, less functional, less austere, more playful, and more willing to include elements from diverse times and cultures; postmodern now describes comparable developments in music, literature, visual art, and anthropology.
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| postmodernity | Condition of a world in flux, with people on the move, in which established groups, boundaries, identities, contrasts, and standards are reaching out and breaking down.
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| potlatch | Competitive feast among Indians on the North Pacific Coast of North America.
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| power | The ability to exercise one's will over others—to do what one wants; the basis of political status.
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| practicing anthropologists | Used as a synonym for applied anthropology; anthropologists who practice their profession outside of academia.
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| prejudice | Devaluing (looking down on) a group because of its assumed behavior, values, capabilities, attitudes, or other attributes.
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| prestige | Esteem, respect, or approval for acts, deeds, or qualities considered exemplary.
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| primary states | States that arise on their own (through competition among chiefdoms), not through contact with other state societies.
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| primatology | The study of fossil and living apes, monkeys, and prosimians, including their behavior and social life.
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| Proconsul | Early Miocene genus of the pliopithecoid superfamily; the most abundant and successful anthropoids of the early Miocene; the last common ancestor shared by the Old World monkeys and the apes.
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| productivity | A basic feature of language; the ability to use the rules of one's language to create new expressions comprehensible to other speakers.
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| progeny price | A gift from the husband and his kin to the wife and her kin before, at, or after marriage; legitimizes children born to the woman as members of the husband's descent group.
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| prosimians | The primate suborder that includes lemurs, lorises, and tarsiers.
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| protolanguage | Language ancestral to several daughter languages.
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| public transcript | As used by James Scott, the open, public interactions between dominators and oppressed—the outer shell of power relations.
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| punctuated equilibrium | Evolutionary theory that long periods of stasis (stability), during which species change little, are interrupted (punctuated) by evolutionary leaps.
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| questionnaire | Form (usually printed) used by sociologists to obtain comparable information from respondents. Often mailed to and filled in by research subjects rather than by the researcher.
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| race | An ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.
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| racism | Discrimination against an ethnic group assumed to have a biological basis.
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| random genetic drift | Change in gene frequency that results not from natural selection but from chance; most common in small populations.
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| random sample | A sample in which all members of the population have an equal statistical chance of being included.
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| ranked society | A type of society with hereditary inequality but not social stratification; individuals are ranked in terms of their genealogical closeness to the chief, but there is a continuum of status, with many individuals and kin groups ranked about equally.
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| recessive | Genetic trait masked by a dominant trait.
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| reciprocity | One of the three principles of exchange; governs exchange between social equals; major exchange mode in band and tribal societies.
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| recombination | Following independent assortment of chromosomes, new arrangements of hereditary units produced through bisexual reproduction.
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| redistribution | Major exchange mode of chiefdoms, many archaic states, and some states with managed economies.
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| refugees | People who have been forced (involuntary refugees) or who have chosen (voluntary refugees) to flee a country, to escape persecution or war.
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| relative dating | Dating technique, for example, stratigraphy, that establishes a time frame in relation to other strata or materials, rather than absolute dates in numbers.
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| religion | Belief and ritual concerned with supernatural beings, powers, and forces.
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| remote sensing | Use of aerial photos and satellite images to locate sites on the ground.
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| revitalization movements | Movements that occur in times of change, in which religious leaders emerge and undertake to alter or revitalize a society.
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| rickets | Nutritional disease caused by a shortage of vitamin D; interferes with the absorption of calcium and causes softening and deformation of the bones.
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| rites of passage | Culturally defined activities associated with the transition from one place or stage of life to another.
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| ritual | Behavior that is formal, stylized, repetitive, and stereotyped, performed earnestly as a social act; rituals are held at set times and places and have liturgical orders.
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| robust | Large, strong, sturdy; said of skull, skeleton, muscle, and teeth; opposite of gracile.
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| sample | A smaller study group chosen to represent a larger population.
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| Sapir-Whorf hypothesis | Theory that different languages produce different ways of thinking.
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| science | A systematic field of study or body of knowledge that aims, through experiment, observation, and deduction, to produce reliable explanations of phenomena, with reference to the material and physical world.
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| scientific medicine | As distinguished from Western medicine, a health-care system based on scientific knowledge and procedures, encompassing such fields as pathology, microbiology, biochemistry, surgery, diagnostic technology, and applications.
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| sedentism | Settled (sedentary) life; preceded food production in the Old World and followed it in the New World.
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| semantics | A language's meaning system.
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| semiperiphery | Structural position in the world system intermediate between core and periphery.
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| settlement hierarchy | A ranked series of communities differing in size, function, and type of building; a three-level settlement hierarchy indicates state organization.
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| sexual dimorphism | Marked differences in male and female anatomy and temperament.
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| sexual dimorphism | Marked differences in male and female biology besides the contrasts in breasts and genitals.
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| sexual orientation | A person's habitual sexual attraction to, and activities with, persons of the opposite sex, heterosexuality; the same sex, homosexuality; or both sexes, bisexuality.
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| sexual selection | Based on differential success in mating, the process in which certain traits of one sex (e.g., color in male birds) are selected because of advantages they confer in winning mates.
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| shaman | A part-time religious practitioner who mediates between ordinary people and supernatural beings and forces.
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| Sivapithecus | Widespread fossil group first found in Pakistan; includes specimens formerly called "Ramapithecus" and fossil apes from Turkey, China, and Kenya; early Sivapithecus may contain the common ancestor of the orangutan and the African apes; late Sivapithecus is now seen as ancestral to the modern orang.
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| slavery | The most extreme, coercive, abusive, and inhumane form of legalized inequality; people are treated as property.
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| smelting | The high-temperature process by which pure metal is produced from an ore.
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| social control | Those fields of the social system (beliefs, practices, and institutions) that are most actively involved in the maintenance of norms and the regulation of conflict.
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| social race | A group assumed to have a biological basis but actually perceived and defined in a social context, by a particular culture rather than by scientific criteria.
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| sociolinguistics | Investigates relationships between social and linguistic variations.
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| sodality, pantribal | A non-kin-based group that exists throughout a tribe, spanning several villages.
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| sororate | Custom by which a widower marries the sister of his deceased wife.
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| speciation | Formation of new species; occurs when subgroups of the same species are separated for a sufficient length of time.
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| species | Population whose members can interbreed to produce offspring that can live and reproduce.
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| state (nation-state) | Complex sociopolitical system that administers a territory and populace with substantial contrasts in occupation, wealth, prestige, and power. An independent, centrally organized political unit; a government. A form of social and political organization with a formal, central government and a division of society into classes.
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| state | A form of social and political organization with a formal, central government and a division of society into classes.
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| state | Sociopolitical organization based on central government and socioeconomic stratification— a division of society into classes.
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| status | Any position that determines where someone fits in society; may be ascribed or achieved.
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| stratification | A stratified society has sharp social divisions—strata—based on unequal access to wealth and power (e.g., into noble and commoner classes).
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| stratification | Characteristic of a system with socioeconomic strata—groups that contrast in regard to social status and access to strategic resources. Each stratum includes people of both sexes and all ages.
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| stratified | Class-structured; stratified societies have marked differences in wealth, prestige, and power between social classes.
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| stratigraphy | Science that examines the ways in which earth sediments are deposited in demarcated layers known as strata (singular, stratum).
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| style shifts | Variations in speech in different contexts.
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| subcultures | Different cultural traditions associated with subgroups in the same complex society.
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| subgroups | Languages within a taxonomy of related languages that are most closely related.
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| subordinate | The lower, or underprivileged, group in a stratified system.
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| superordinate | The upper, or privileged, group in a stratified system.
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| survey research | Characteristic research procedure among social scientists other than anthropologists. Studies society through sampling, statistical analysis, and impersonal data collection.
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| symbol | Something, verbal or nonverbal, that arbitrarily and by convention stands for something else, with which it has no necessary or natural connection.
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| syncretisms | Cultural mixes, including religious blends, that emerge from acculturation—the exchange of cultural features when cultures come into continuous firsthand contact.
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| syntax | The arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences.
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| systematic survey | Information gathered on patterns of settlement over a large area; provides a regional perspective on the archaeological record.
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| taboo | Set apart as sacred and off-limits to ordinary people; prohibition backed by supernatural sanctions.
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| taphonomy | The study of the processes that affect the remains of dead animals, such as their scattering by carnivores and scavengers, their distortion by various forces, and their possible fossilization.
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| taxonomy | Classification scheme; assignment to categories (taxa; singular, taxon).
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| teocentli | Or teosinte, a wild grass; apparent ancestor of maize.
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| Teotihuacan | A.D. 100 to 700; first state in the Valley of Mexico and earliest major Mesoamerican empire.
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| terrestrial | Ground-dwelling; baboons, macaques, and humans are terrestrial primates; gorillas spend most of their time on the ground.
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| text | Something that is creatively "read," interpreted, and assigned meaning by each person who receives it; includes any media-borne image, such as Carnaval.
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| theory | An explanatory framework, containing a series of statements, that helps us understand why (something exists); theories suggest patterns, connections, and relationships that may be confirmed by new research.
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| Thomson's nose rule | Rule stating that the average nose tends to be longer in areas with lower mean annual temperatures; based on the geographic distribution of nose length among human populations.
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| transhumance | One of two variants of pastoralism; part of the population moves seasonally with the herds while the other part remains in home villages.
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| tribe | Form of sociopolitical organization usually based on horticulture or pastoralism. Socioeconomic stratification and centralized rule are absent in tribes, and there is no means of enforcing political decisions.
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| tropics | Geographic belt extending about 23 degrees north and south of the equator, between the Tropic of Cancer (north) and the Tropic of Capricorn (south).
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| underdifferentiation | Planning fallacy of viewing less-developed countries as an undifferentiated group; ignoring cultural diversity and adopting a uniform approach (often ethnocentric) for very different types of project beneficiaries.
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| uniformitarianism | Belief that explanations for past events should be sought in ordinary forces that continue to work today.
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| unilineal descent | Matrilineal or patrilineal descent.
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| universal | Something that exists in every culture.
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| Upper Paleolithic | Blade-tool-making traditions associated with early H. sapiens sapiens; named from their location in upper, or more recent, layers of sedimentary deposits.
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| variables | Attributes (e.g., sex, age, height, weight) that differ from one person or case to the next.
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| vertical mobility | Upward or downward change in a person's social status.
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| visual predation theory | Theory that the primates evolved in lower branches and undergrowth by developing visual and tactile abilities to aid in hunting and snaring insects.
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| wealth | All a person's material assets, including income, land, and other types of property; the basis of economic status.
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| westernization | The acculturative influence of Western expansion on native cultures.
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| working class | Or proletariat; those who must sell their labor to survive; the antithesis of the bourgeoisie in Marx's class analysis.
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