Anthropology: Fields, Methods, and Evolution

1. Weeks 1-2 • Four fields of anthropology • Applied anthropology is done in all four fields • Two epistemological traditions • Field work in all four fields • Applied work in all four fields

2. Method and theory • The humanist and interpretivist vs. the scientific and positivist traditions • Emic vs. etic data • Three paradigms: Sociobiology, idealism, and materialism • Concept of culture • Nomothetic vs. idiographic theories

3. Rationalism and empiricism • Tabula rasa • Kant’s attempt at a solution • The dilemma of relativism • War, economics, and the development of science

4. Gutenberg’s contribution to modernism and science • Bacon and Newton: the principles of induction and deduction • Newton’s hypothetico-inductive model • The Enlightenment and social science

5. The qualitative-quantitative problem • Participant observation is anthropology’s strategic method for collecting many different kinds of data.

6. August Comte’s contribution to social science: Effective knowledge can be used to improve human lives. • The mastery-over-nature metaphor transferred to social science • The humanist reaction against positivism

7. Racial thinking and the development of anthropology in the 19th Century • U.S. and Europe: the development of four-field anthropology • Unilinear evolution, historical particularism, biological and structural functionalism

8. Functionalism and the problem of teleology • Key figures immediately after unilineal evolution: Boas, Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown

9. Weeks 3-4 • Evolution: Linneaus, LeClerc, Cuvier, Lamarck, Malthus, Darwin • Lyell’s role: uniformitarianism

10. Mammalian traits • constant body temperature, postpartum development of helpless offspring, internal reproduction and fertilization, greater reliance on learned behavior • The K-T event and the appearance of primates

11. Prosimians and Anthropoids • Catarrhines and Platyrrhines • Catarrhines include cercopithecines and colobines (OW monkeys), and hominoids • Hominoids include hylobates, the pongids, the genus Pan, and the hominids

12. Fossil primates: • Oligocene anthropoids • Miocene ancestors of the hominoids

13. Emergence of hominids at the end of the Miocene • Differentiation into arboreal and terrestrial hominoids • Freeing hand, tall-grass, sharing food, using tools as weapons

14. Raymond Dart and the Taung child • Australopithecines: the sequence • Homo habilis • Homo ergaster • Homo erectus • H. erectus moves out of Africa

15. Hominid sequence I • Sahelanthropus • Ardipithecus ramidus • Australopithecus anamensis • Australopithecus afarensis • Australopithecus africanus Taung • Australopithecus robustus (P. robustus • Australopithecus boisei (P. boisei, Zinj)

16. Hominid Sequence II • Homo habilis (P. rudolfensis) • Homo rudolfensis • Homo ergaster • Homo erectus Trinil (P. erectus) • Homo heidelbergensis Mauer • Homo rhodesiensis Kabwe • Homo neanderthalensis • Homo sapiens

17. Reduction of the saggital crest and the nuchal bun • Punctuated equilibrium • Tool using and tool making: the evidence from modern chimps

18. Early human life and sexuality • The controversial Fialkowski hypothesis • AMH (anatomically modern humans) and mitochondrial DNA

19. Single and multiple origin theories of H. sapiens. • The disappearance of the Neanderthals: note the evidence at Qafzeh. • Adaptive radiation

20. Dating fossils and artifacts • Relative vs. absolute dating • Oldowan and Acheulean tools • The Levallois method