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ANTH 235, CULTURE & ADAPTATION:
ARCHAEOLOGY AS ANTHROPOLOGY
First, to re-cap: modern anthropology is comprised of
four principal sub-disciplines: social or cultural (or
sociocultural) anthropology, biological anthropology,
linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. A “fifth subdiscipline,” applied (or engaged) anthropology, is actually
an integral part of the other four.
Archaeologists attempt to describe the form of the past, in
part through decoding artifacts’ functions and, ultimately,
seek to understand processes of change.
Culture is the primary means by which humans adapt.
culture versus Culture
(e.g., Diné or Navajo culture versus human Culture)
Myriad definitions of “culture” abound:
http://www.carla.umn.edu/culture/definitions.html
http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_culture/culture-index.html
UNESCO (2002) has defined culture as “...the set of
distinctive spiritual, material, intellectual and emotional
features of society or a social group which encompasses, in
addition to art and literature, lifestyles, ways of living
together, value systems, traditions and beliefs.”
Culture is an extra-somatic adaptive mechanism.
1. Culture is uniquely human.
2. Culture is learned
(e.g., lower-case “c,” culture, is not “hard-wired” in
humans, although maybe the preadaptation for uppercase “C,” Culture, is).
3. Culture is cumulative and transmitted, largely through
language.
4. Culture has moral force.
Culture creates context. Most humor, for example,
literally does not translate easily.
The problem with “translation” is not purely linguistic, but culture-contextual.
For example, the cartoon below is understandable to modern residents of, say,
Boston or Beijing, but what about the highlands of New Guinea?
By the same token, you probably don’t find anything especially compelling
about this package of Japanese Doritos, but that’s the whole point: you likely
don’t have the context, created by culture, to appreciate why this particular
image might induce you to eat Doritos (the packaging reads, roughly, “return of
the electric massage…”)
And then, of course, there’s the traditional festive
Halloween Tree…
HOW DO ARCHAEOLOGISTS STUDY CULTURE?
Culture is functional; it serves a purpose (and that
purpose is adaptation).
The fossil record  complete biological organism.
The archaeological record  systemic, living culture.
Culture change and evolution are both responses to
adaptive challenges.
Modern anthropologists, including archaeologists, seek to
understand the complexity of change within human culture
by studying it from both synchronic and diachronic
perspectives.
The important distinction is resolution (sociocultural
anthropology) versus depth (archaeology) of the data. It is
precisely this distinction that defines the operational limits
of both sub-disciplines, even though the basic questions
addressed by both are the same.
Finally, if the relationship between biology and culture in
shaping human evolution is of special interest to you, you
might enjoy reading:
Richerson, Peter J. and Robert Boyd. (2005). Not by
Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human
Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brown, Melissa J., editor. (2008). Explaining Culture
Scientifically. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
And, if quasi-cultural behavior among non-human primates
(including tool use), interests you, you might enjoy:
Ottoni, Eduardo B. and Patrícia Izar. (2008).
“Capuchin monkey tool use: overview and
implications.” Evolutionary Anthropology 17(4): 171178.
Perry, Susan and Joseph H. Manson. (2008).
Manipulative Monkeys, the Capuchins of Lomas
Barbudal. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.