Course Introduction
Cultural Anthropology Exam Review
Cultural Anthropology explores the diverse ways in which people around the world live, think, and interact. This course examines human cultures, beliefs, customs, social structures, and institutions, focusing on how they shape individuals identities and worldviews. Students will analyze key concepts such as kinship, gender, religion, language, economic systems, and globalization through ethnographic case studies and theoretical frameworks. Emphasis is placed on cross-cultural comparison and developing an appreciation for cultural diversity, as well as understanding the impact of cultural change in a rapidly globalizing world.
Recommended Textbook
Anthropology Appreciating Human Diversity 15th Edition by Phillip Kottak
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Page 2
Chapter 1: What Is Anthropology
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Q1) Anthropology may improve psychological studies of human behavior by contributing
A) examples of primitive thinking from tribal societies.
B) nothing, since anthropology focuses on culture and psychology concentrates on personality.
C) prehistoric analysis.
D) a humanistic approach to psychology.
E) a cross-cultural perspective on models of human psychology.
Answer: E
Q2) How are the four subfields of U.S. anthropology unified?
A) Each subfield studies human variation through time and space.
B) Each subfield studies the human capacity for language.
C) Each subfield studies human biological variability.
D) Each subfield studies human genetic variation through time and space.
E) The subfields really are not unified; their grouping into one discipline is a historical accident.
Answer: A
Q3) Culture is not itself biological but rests on certain features of human biology.
A)True
B)False
Answer: True
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Chapter 2: Culture
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Q1) Only people living in the industrialized, capitalist countries of Europe and the United States are ethnocentric.
A)True
B)False
Answer: False
Q2) All of the following are evidence of the tendency to view culture as a process EXCEPT
A) analysis that attempts to establish boundaries between cultures.
B) practice theory.
C) attention to agency in anthropological analysis.
D) interest in public, collective, and individual dimensions of day-to-day life.
E) interest in how acts of resistance can make and remake culture.
Answer: A
Q3) The incest taboo is a cultural universal, but
A) it applies only to groups with bilateral kinship terminologies.
B) it does not count as such, since higher primates do it too.
C) the definition of what constitutes incest varies widely across cultures.
D) it has only recently appeared among tribal societies.
E) it has disappeared among modern societies.
Answer: C
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Chapter 3: Applying Anthropology
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Q1) What is a disease?
A) a health problem as it is experienced by the one affected
B) an artificial product of biomedicine
C) a consequence of a foraging lifestyle
D) an unnatural state of health
E) a scientifically identified health threat
Answer: E
Q2) What did Robert Redfield argue about the relations between urban and rural communities?
A) Peasants are culturally isolated from cities.
B) Cities are centers from which cultural innovations are spread to rural and tribal areas.
C) Innovation tends to move from rural to urban areas.
D) There are so many connections between rural and urban areas that it is not useful to distinguish between the two within one cultural context.
E) Urban centers have more in common with each other, even across national boundaries, than they do with rural areas in the same country.
Answer: B
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Chapter 4: Doing Archaeology and Biological Anthropology
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Q1) Which of the following researchers would most likely NOT be part of a paleoanthropological research team?
A) geologist
B) palynologist
C) paleoecologist
D) chemist
E) psychotherapist
Q2) How do researchers date the past? What are the limitations of each dating technique?
Q3) In what ways are physical anthropology and archaeology multidisciplinary? Why is this important to know?
Q4) Digging according to arbitrary levels is quicker but less refined than digging according to the site's stratigraphy.
A)True
B)False
Q5) Electron spin resonance is used to date organic material from archaeological sites.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 5: Evolution and Genetics
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Q1) Early on in this chapter, we learned that evolution refers to descent with modification over generations. Geneticists, however, have an even more specific definition of evolution:
A) directional selection of the fittest alleles in a breeding population.
B) a change in gene frequency; that is, in the frequency of alleles in a breeding population from generation to generation.
C) a change in the gene frequency within the DNA of a single individual organism.
D) the survival of the chemically fittest allele in the gene pool.
E) a change in gene frequency caused by either chromosomal rearrangement or recombination.
Q2) Darwin and Wallace simultaneously proposed which of the following theoretical models?
A) evolution
B) natural selection
C) creationism
D) uniformitarianism
E) transformism
Q3) Give an example of how punctuated equilibrium would work.
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Chapter 6: Human Variation and Adaptation
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Q1) According to Thomson's nose rule, longer noses are more adaptive to colder climates than shorter ones.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following statements about human skin color is NOT true?
A) Skin color varies because of differences in ultraviolet radiation between different regions of the world.
B) The amount of melanin in the skin affects the body's production of vitaminD.
C) The amount of melanin in the skin affects the body's ability to process lactose.
D) Light skin is at a selective advantage outside the tropics because it admits ultraviolet radiation that causes the body to manufacture vitamin D, helping to prevent rickets and osteoporosis.
E) Light skin is at a selective disadvantage in the tropics because it is more susceptible to the destruction of the folate that is needed to produce folic acid, which protects against neural tube defects in human embryos.
Q3) Why do differences in skin pigmentation exist around the world?
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Chapter 7: The Primates
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Q1) What are the eras of ancient, middle, and recent life, respectively?
A) Paleozoic, Mesozoic, Cenozoic
B) Hadean, Archean, Proterozoic
C) Jurassic, Cretaceous, Tertiary
D) Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Recent
E) Devonian, Carboniferous, Permian
Q2) Review this chapter and answer the following questions: What are the parts of the skeleton that seem to be more commonly found as fossils? What are the anatomical clues that these fossils provide to help scientists address questions about hominin origins?
Q3) Homologies are similarities between two species that have been jointly inherited from a common ancestor.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Which of the following is NOT a hominoid?
A) gibbon
B) lemur
C) Homo sapiens
D) orangutan
E) siamang
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Chapter 8: Early Hominins
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Q1) What is one of the probable explanations of the extinction of the later australopithecines?
A) They were eventually unsuccessful in competing for available resources with early populations of Homo.
B) The broad-spectrum revolution was not adaptive.
C) They had no social organization.
D) They were a short-lived transitional stage between apes and humans.
E) They are relatively unimportant to the study of human evolution.
Q2) Which of the following statements about australopithecines is true?
A) They had a greater cranial capacity than Homo erectus.
B) They lived in the tropical forest.
C) They have been found predominantly in West Africa.
D) They were fully bipedal.
E) They were primarily carnivores.
Q3) One of the reasons the discovery of the specimen A.garhi and other materials in its site is important is that it provided evidence that large mammals were being butchered with early stone tool technologies, which suggests the onset of a dietary revolution.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 9: Archaic Homo
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Q1) European fossils and tools have contributed disproportionately to our knowledge and interpretation of early (archaic) H. sapiens. What explains this?
A) that anatomically modern humans evolved in France
B) the richness of data from the Zhoukoudian site
C) the long history of Paleolithic archaeology in Europe relative to other regions in the world
D) that archaic H. sapiens were driven to Europe by the more aggressive Cro-Magnons E) stratigraphic disturbances caused by glaciers
Q2) The recent hominin fossil finds from Ileret, Kenya, negate the conventional view held since 1960 that H. habilis and H. erectus evolved one after the other. Instead, they lived side by side in eastern Africa for perhaps half a million years.
A)True
B)False
Q3) The Paleolithic tool tradition associated with H. erectus is the Acheulean.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 10: The Origin and Spread of Modern Humans
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Q1) What species is associated with the cave paintings in western Europe?
A) Homo habilis
B) Homo erectus
C) archaic Homo sapiens
D) anatomically modern humans
E) Australopithecus afarensis
Q2) Discuss the Neandertals' dating and geographic distributions. Review and evaluate the various positions that have been taken in interpreting the relationship between Neandertals and anatomically modern humans.
Q3) Recent recalibration of radiocarbon dating has dismissed the previously held belief that Neandertals and anatomically modern humans coexisted in time and place.
A)True
B)False
Q4) What species is associated with the broad-spectrum revolution?
A) robust australopithecines
B) Neanderthals
C) anatomically modern humans
D) archaic Homo sapiens
E) Homo erectus
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Chapter 11: The First Farmers
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Q1) Which of the following is NOT one of the areas where food production was independently invented?
A) the eastern United States
B) the Indus Valley
C) the Middle East
D) Mesoamerica
E) southern China
Q2) Middle Eastern food production arose in the context of four environmental zones. From highest altitude to lowest, they are
A) high plateau, Natufian fields, Mesopotamia, and alluvial desert (the area watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers).
B) Zagros, piedmont steppe, hilly flanks, and alluvial plains.
C) high plateau, hilly flanks, piedmont steppe, and alluvial desert (the area watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers).
D) high zone, middle-high zone, middle-low zone, and low zone.
E) Ali Kosh, high plateau, Mesopotamia, and piedmont steppe.
Q3) Food production was a critical step toward the broad-spectrum revolution.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 12: The First Cities and States
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Q1) Metallurgy and the wider and rapid distribution of metals evident after 5000 B.P. would not have developed without the crucial discovery of
A) copper hammering.
B) the technique of heating copper at low temperatures.
C) richer veins of copper.
D) smelting.
E) mining.
Q2) The Natufians were the first culture to develop a state in the Indus Valley.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following kinds of evidence for warfare have NOT been found by archaeologists while investigating the Maya collapse?
A) burned buildings
B) terra-cotta soldiers
C) hieroglyphic texts
D) projectile points
E) fortifications
Q4) How are chiefdoms different from states? How do archaeologists distinguish between the two?
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Chapter 13: Method and Theory in Cultural Anthropology
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Q1) Practice theory
A) focuses on how individuals, through their actions and practices, influence and transform the world they live in.
B) was popularized by Margaret Mead in the 1940s.
C) is the only theoretical paradigm to effectively solve the "culture-individual" problem. D) actually shares the same deterministic assumptions of earlier theoretical paradigms. E) explains social phenomena only in nonindustrial societies.
Q2) What advantages do you see in ethnographic research techniques? What are the advantages for survey techniques? Which one would you choose, and what would that choice depend on?
Q3) The emic perspective focuses on local explanations of criteria and significance. A)True
B)False
Q4) Boas and his students were strong proponents of cross-cultural comparisons, without which they could not validate their findings.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 14: Language and Communication
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Questions
Q1) Recent genetic research suggests that a speech-friendly mutation took hold in humans around 150,000 years ago, thus conferring selective advantages (linguistic and cultural abilities) that allowed those who had it to spread it, at the expense of those who did not.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Which of the following statements about chimpanzee call systems is NOT true?
A) They consist of a limited number of sounds.
B) Like language, they include displacement and cultural transmission.
C) They consist of sounds that vary in intensity and duration.
D) Calls cannot be combined when multiple stimuli are present.
E) They are stimuli dependent.
Q3) Sapir and Whorf argued that all humans share a single set of universal grammatical categories.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Bourdieu argues that languages with the highest symbolic capital are those that are better systems of communication.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 15: Ethnicity and Race
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Q1) Colonialism often involves dividing up ethnic groups to weaken their authority.
A)True
B)False
Q2) In Japan, the burakumin
A) are perceived as pure Japanese, even if one of their parents is not Japanese.
B) are Japanese citizens of mixed ancestry who face discrimination.
C) are the cream of Japan's racial categories, having the purest blood.
D) no longer face discrimination.
E) constitute a numerical majority in Japan.
Q3) What is the term for ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status?
A) ethnicities
B) captive nations
C) nations
D) nationalities
E) ethnic avengers
Q4) The 2009 poverty rates for different minority groups in the U.S. are an example of stratification.
A)True
B)False
Page 17
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Chapter 16: Making a Living
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Q1) Imagine a foraging society that operates largely according to principles of generalized reciprocity, just prior to being colonized. Now defend the following statement: "Capitalism is not just an economic system, it is also a cultural system."
Q2) In nonindustrial societies, economic activities are embedded in the society.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Which of the following economic principles is generally dominant in industrial society?
A) generalized exchange
B) the market principle
C) redistribution
D) negative reciprocity
E) balanced reciprocity
Q4) The market principle dominates economic activities in band-level foraging societies.
A)True
B)False
Q5) What are the basic differences and similarities between horticultural and foraging populations? Indicate reasons for the contrasts.
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Chapter 17: Political Systems
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Q1) The anthropological approach to the study of political systems and organization is global and comparative and includes nonstates as well as the states and nation-states usually studied by political scientists.
A)True
B)False
Q2) Pantribal sodalities function to integrate the community by providing a series of important nonkin relationships.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Most band and tribal societies in the world today are completely cut off from the rest of the world.
A)True
B)False
Q4) According to Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault, it is easier and more effective to dominate people in their minds than to try to control their bodies.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 18: Gender
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Q1) Flexibility in sexual expression seems to be an aspect of our primate heritage.
A)True
B)False
Q2) All of the following are associated with plow agriculture EXCEPT
A) a decline in both polygyny and unilineal descent.
B) differential rights in divorce and sexuality for men and women.
C) an overall increase in the status of women as new production techniques called for female as well as male labor.
D) a sharp contrast between the domestic and extradomestic realms.
E) the isolation of women in nuclear family households.
Q3) How are sexuality, sex, and gender related to each other? What are the differences among these three analytical concepts?
Q4) The tasks and activities that a culture assigns to each sex are known as A) gender stereotypes.
B) the prestige coefficient.
C) sexual ascribed status.
D) gender roles.
E) sex roles.
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20
Chapter 19: Families, Kinship, and Descent
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Q1) In what kinds of situations would you expect to find ambilineal descent? Unilineal descent? Why?
Q2) Discuss ways in which kinship and descent help human populations adapt to their environments.
Q3) In a lineal system of kinship terminology, which of the following pairs would be called by the same term?
A) M and FZ
B) M and MZ
C) FB and MB
D) FB and FZ
E) F and FB
Q4) What does ego stand for in a depiction of a kinship system?
A) the sense of distinct individuality that is present in any society
B) the emotional attachment felt by the people who use the system
C) the point of reference used to determine which kin terms go where
D) the boundary between one's kin group and outsiders
E) a gender-free way of reckoning kinship
Q5) A nuclear family includes ego, ego's parents, and ego's grandparents.
A)True
B)False
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Chapter 20: Marriage
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Q1) Anthropologist Edmund Leach (1955) observed that, depending on the society, several different kinds of rights are allocated by marriage. According to Leach, marriage can, but doesn't always, accomplish each of the following EXCEPT
A) give either or both spouses a monopoly in the sexuality of the other.
B) give either or both spouses rights to the labor of the other.
C) give either or both spouses rights over the latent and manifest functions of the other.
D) give either or both spouses rights over the other's property.
E) establish a socially significant "relationship of affinity" between spouses and their relatives.
Q2) The biological degeneration explanation for the incest taboo has won over supporters because of universal concerns about biology.
A)True
B)False
Q3) Same-sex marriages are not culturally viable institutions.
A)True
B)False
Q4) Does the practice of paying a dowry necessarily imply gender inequality?
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Chapter 21: Religion
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Q1) Is religion declining or becoming increasingly important in contemporary society? Why? If you believe that religion is declining, what is replacing it?
Q2) Which of the following is true about rites of passage?
A) Beliefs and rituals can, ironically, both diminish and create anxiety and a sense of insecurity and danger.
B) Despite their prevalence during the time that Victor Turner did his research, rites of passage have disappeared with the advent of modern life.
C) Participants in rites of passage only are tricked into believing that there was a big change in their lives.
D) Rites of passage only worsen the anxieties caused by other aspects of religion.
E) Rites of passage would be effective in diminishing anxiety and fear if they did not involve the liminal phase.
Q3) Much religious and ritual behavior is adaptive. Can you think of cases in which it is not? What does it mean for religion to be maladaptive?
Q4) Discuss two cases of religion's role in social change.
Q5) How do you explain the universality of religion?
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Chapter 22: Arts, Media, and Sports
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Q1) For the women of Planinica, a Muslim village in prewar Bosnia, singing signaled A) a series of transitions between life stages.
B) the arrival of spring.
C) that the artisans of the neighboring village were in town to sell their goods.
D) different things to different women.
E) the arrival of soldiers who had finished their military service.
Q2) What kind of evidence led scientists studying remains at South Africa's Blombos Cave to suggest that they had found proof of symbolic thought dated to more than 70,000 years ago?
A) The tools found were specialized for different purposes.
B) Among the bone tools they found were some that were not just sharp but also symmetrical and polished, characteristics that do not add functional value to the tool.
C) Like Upper Paleolithic cave paintings in Europe, the art in Blombos Cave exhibited graphic representations on its walls.
D) What looks like rudimentary pedestals were found that may have been used to exhibit artistic objects.
E) Among the smaller objects found were earrings and necklaces.
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Chapter 23: The World System and Colonialism
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Q1) In anthropology, history, and literature, the field of postcolonial studies has gained prominence since the 1970s. Postcolonial refers to
A) the study of the interactions between European nations and the societies they colonized.
B) the period succeeding the slave trade.
C) a moral stance toward oppressed peoples.
D) the study of social movements that, instead of rejecting colonialism, actually embraced it and transformed it for their own benefit.
E) an up-and-coming subfield in sociology.
Q2) The labels First World, Second World, and Third World represent a common, if ethnocentric, way of categorizing nations. First World refers to the democratic West, which is traditionally conceived of as being in opposition to a Second World ruled by A) folk economic and political models.
B) primitive neoliberalism.
C) Communism.
D) dictators.
E) imperialism.
Q3) What is the world system perspective, and why is it important in anthropology?
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Chapter 24: Anthropologys Role in a Globalizing World
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Q1) ________ refers to the rapid spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other cultures.
A) Diasporation
B) Symbolic domination
C) Cultural imperialism
D) Conquest
E) Colonialism
Q2) Cultural meaning is
A) imposed by a text.
B) locally created.
C) inherent in a text.
D) produced by a text, not from it.
E) determined only by the author.
Q3) How have recent movements regarding the politics of identity with regard to indigenous peoples varied around the world?
Q4) What is the difference between postmodernity and postmodernism? How has postmodernity affected the units of anthropological study?
Q5) What is a text, and how does its reading relate to the role of the individual in popular culture?
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