Introduction to

Anthropology:
Holistic and Applied
Research on Being
Human

Indiana University of Pennsylvania

Department of Anthropology
Copyright © 2022 Author Name

All rights reserved.

ISBN: 9798858723769
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments i

1 What is Anthropology 1

2 A Brief History of Anthropology 23

3 Research Methods 55

4 Evolution and Genetics 90

5 Primates 118

6 Early Hominin Evolution 149

7 Genus Homo and First Cultures 180

8 Upper Paleolithic and Ice Age 214

9 Development of Agriculture 238

10 Sociopolitical Classification 269

11 Culture Change and Globalization 293

12 Communication and Language 322

13 Politics, Economics, and Inequality 357

14 Gender and Sex 383

15 Kinship and Marriage 408

16 The Issue with Race 437

17 Health and Medicine 466

18 Religion 494

19 Human Rights and Activism 519

20 Climate Change and Human Lifeway Adaptation 546

 MODULE 3: RESEARCH METHODS

Cultural Anthropology Research Methods

In this chapter, we describe how anthropologists’ study human behavior,

both in the present (cultural anthropology) and the past
(archaeology). Because Anthropology is a holistic field that covers all aspects
of humanity, the methods used by anthropologists are vast. For this reason,
we will focus on traditional methods of cultural anthropology and
archaeology within this module. You’ll learn more about methods used
within these subfields, as well as biological and linguist anthropology,
throughout this resource. Regardless of subfield, an anthropologist’s unique
toolkit and skill set enables them to appreciate the many ways of being human
on our planet, communicate fluently with diverse groups of people, and to
think critically and reflectively.

Cultural anthropologists use ethnography as a research strategy to

critically observe and analyze the actions and interactions of human
groups. Ethnography is at the heart of the anthropological toolkit of
methodological, ethical, and theoretical approaches that cultural
anthropologists use to conduct -research. It typically involves living with
people or participating in their daily lives for an extended period. However,
this isn’t just a practice used in remote settings; it is also used in communities
much closer to home or even online. Through ethnography, anthropologists
explore and build theories about social life and human behavior. We conduct
empirical research, involving direct observation and documentation, but

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ethnography isn’t just a scientific method; it’s also an art form. Ethnography
teaches mindfulness, critical thinking, self-awareness, and cultural
relativity. We learn to be aware of our cultural lenses as we build
relationships, and we explore human creativity, experience, and meaning,
which involves the art of translation and interpretation. By documenting,
analyzing, writing about, and connecting or collaborating with people who
are culturally both similar to and different from ourselves, we learn about
human diversity while challenging our assumptions about “just the way things
are.”

Starting with People

Let’s start with a recent example of culture change: the use of masks
during the COVID-19 pandemic in communities across the United
States. Masks are interesting, because they show the ways in which elements
of culture, including symbols, values, beliefs, and behaviors, can be tangled
up together. For most people in the United States, wearing masks was
something new in our daily routines. We also had to fit them into our habits
and navigate a complex social world of meaning in spaces where masks were
either required, optional, or somewhere in between. During the pandemic,
one small article of clothing became a powerful and polysemic
symbol. Polysemic refers to multiple layers of meaning that symbols can
have. Over the course of the pandemic in 2020, battles over mask-wearing
symbolized a battle over values, identities, and norms during a time of
profound societal changes and challenges.

If public health practitioners wanted to encourage people to wear masks

in a way that most minimized the risk of transmission, that meant engaging
with these various aspects of culture and not just sharing epidemiological
information and statistics with a target population. To direct a shift in
cultural practices, we must start by understanding what things mean to
people, how they fit into their lives, and how they intersect with the multiple
social roles and identities that people have, and the systems that they are
embedded within. In short, we must start with people.

Starting with people means navigating complex social relationships,

building trust, asking questions, listening, observing, and participating in

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people’s social worlds. Starting with people also means approaching research
with cultural relativism, which is the idea that cultures must be understood
on their own terms and based on their own contexts instead of being judged
by the standards of a different culture. Often the things that are designed for
people (policies, products, or programs) don’t connect with the lived
experience of different people. Ethnography shifts focus towards peoples’
lived experiences and the ways they understand and interact with the world.

A Toolkit for Ethnographic Research

We typically think of a toolkit as a box of instruments that is sturdy and

physical. Anthropologists use notebooks, cameras, and various software
programs for data collection and analysis. However, the anthropological
toolkit also includes a series of perspectives, strategies, and prep work for
doing research because of one fundamental aspect of ethnography: the
ethnographer is the main instrument for generating data. The ethnographer
becomes the instrument because they ask questions, build rapport, and notice
and record specific details.

Anthropologists ask questions, and the kind of questions we ask, and who
we ask them of, varies depending on the research design. The ethnographer
figures out what details to record, and what questions to ask, because it
simply isn’t possible to notice, investigate, and describe everything. Early
fieldworkers in anthropology sought to understand as much as they could
about culture groups by investigating how different parts of culture and
society, such as religion, political organization, or kinship, all fit
together. Another primary focus of early fieldwork was salvage
ethnography: documenting and recording the practices and cultural beliefs
of groups threatened with assimilation or extinction by colonialism. While
the seeds of fieldwork methods began in these early contexts, anthropologists
have shifted away from conducting fieldwork that views cultures as isolated,
homogenous, and traditional. Today, most cultural anthropology is what we
call problem-oriented; that is, ethnographic research focused on a particular
issue or conflict.

For example, Amanda Poole and Jennifer Riggan are cultural

anthropologists who conduct ethnographic research in Eritrean refugee

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camps in northern Ethiopia. Their research focused on a particular problem:

why schools set up for refugees were failing to retain students, many of whom
were choosing to leave the country or even risking their lives in their attempt
to reach Europe. New global migration policies are designed to keep
refugees from risking the dangerous journey to Europe by providing
educational and employment opportunities that would encourage them to
remain in refugee hosting countries like Ethiopia. The experiences,
perspectives, aspirations, and struggles of Eritrean refugee students
illuminate the fraught nature of these global migration policies. Rather than
a peaceful process of local integration and resettlement, these policies are
experienced as a violent form of containment because they hold mobile
people outside of developed countries where they might pursue stable
livelihoods and sense meaningful progression in their lives. In short, we
cannot learn about the work that global migration policies are doing in the
world unless we learn from the lived experience of people. However, many
of these people do not have a seat at the table where these policies are
designed.

This approach to ethnographic research is often multi-sited as it

investigates a social phenomenon across various social actors and institutions
from classrooms in refugee camps, to the headquarters of development and
humanitarian aid organizations that coordinate education program for
refugees, to centers of administration where policies are made far from the
camps where people are living. This approach helps to account for the
external forces and entities that shape what happens in peoples’ lives and
lands. Ethnography is also multi-timed, meaning that it focuses on multiple
time periods, often through longitudinal (long-term) research that is based
on repeated visits. A long-term perspective lends itself to a multi-sited
project as people, projects, and institutions are increasingly in motion, but
even across diverse and dynamic settings, ethnography maintains a focus on
lived experience.

Preparation for research is an important step to help you figure out what
to focus on. Conducting a literature review involves investigating and
synthesizing existing scholarship, often for the purpose of clarifying your
own research questions, methods, and goals. Identifying the major findings
and debates on topics related to your work helps to refine a project’s focus.

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Identifying gaps in the scholarship is also useful for thinking about the
significant contributions your own research might make. For example, in
reviewing the literature on refugee education, Poole and Riggan discovered
that anthropologists who worked with refugee communities typically didn’t
focus on schools, so there wasn’t much ethnography done in these
settings. At the same time, the growing literature on refugee education from
other disciplines provided important insight on how many refugee youth
lacked access to schools, but ethnographic questions such as “What does
school mean for refugees?” weren’t really being asked. In the case that
refugee students did have access to schools, why weren’t they all going?

One of the key methods in the ethnographic toolkit is

observation. Structured observations occur when the researcher tries not to
interfere in what is happening while they observe particular items, often, at
pre-determined intervals. However, much ethnography happens through
participant observation. Rather than trying to be unobtrusive, participant
observation involves the opposite by actively engaging in the lives, activities,
and events of the people you are working with. It involves learning the
language, building long term relationships, and becoming culturally
fluent. This method depends upon excellent note-taking skills that can
record rich sensory, spatial, and social detail. Just interviewing people is not
participant observation. If you were studying farming families in rural
America and interviewed hundreds of people by sometimes flying out to
remote areas to talk to them in the local café, this would not be participant
observation. Participant observation is spending significant time in a small
town and immersing yourself in the life and work of a farming community,
then stepping back enough to write about what you learned. Participant
observation is a craft that can help validate data because it provides a general
understanding of what things mean and how they work in particular
places. These places can vary from a farming community, to a court room, a
classroom, or clinic. Participant observation is founded upon building trust,
or rapport, with research participants. You can see three examples of
participant observation in the video Doing Anthropology.

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Video 3.1. Check out the video about MIT

anthropologists “doing anthropology” and explaining
examples of participant observation online for more
details!

Qualitative vs. Quantitative Research

Cultural anthropologists conduct both quantitative and qualitative

research. Quantitative research produces data that can be analyzed
statistically and generalized to describe a broader population. For example,
quantitative data may tell you what percent of college students experience
food insecurity. This kind of research usually involves sampling, in which a
randomly selected group is chosen from a larger population, and they are
studied. For example, how polls randomly sample voters during an
election. In contrast, qualitative research does not produce numerical or
statistical data to represent many research participants, but rather goes into
more depth with fewer research participants to provide a nuanced
understanding of issues and settings that may initially be unfamiliar. For
example, qualitative data looks deeper into the statistics to show how and why
different kinds of college students experience food insecurity, and what it
means to them. For ethnographic qualitative research, research participants
are not randomly sampled because social life and culture are patterned, not
random. The anthropologist selects research participants who are
knowledgeable about particular topics and willing to share their time and
stories. In short, quantitative methods give you an understanding of the scale
of an issue, while qualitative methods help you understand what the issue
means. Often, both quantitative and qualitative approaches are used, which
anthropologists call a mixed methods study. Below we describe three
specific “tools” common to mixed methods research.

Qualitative research typically involves ethnographic interviews; a

method you saw used in the Doing Anthropology video. Ethnographic
interviews are often unstructured or semi-structured, meaning the researcher
has a clear plan, or in the case of semi-structured interviews, a list of pre-
written interview questions, but the interview is fluid. It is designed to
prompt conversation, to get people to open up, and let them express

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themselves (see Figures 3.1 & 3.2). Interview questions are often open-
ended. Instead of asking for yes-no responses to specific questions, they ask
interviewees to share their thoughts and experiences. For example: rather
than asking, “Has your life as a student changed during the pandemic?”; you
would instead ask, “How has your life as a student changed during the
pandemic? Can you share an example?” The first question would elicit a
simple yes or no answer, the second questions would potentially elicit a
response with more detail and reflection.

Often, ethnographers rely on cultural consultants: people who become

central to the research as cultural guides, mentors, and translators. A similar
method that focuses on individual stories involves life-history, in which a
person is asked to recollect their experiences across various time periods,
providing intimate insight into past and current events. Life-histories are
often recorded across several long sessions and transcribed (converted from
audio into text). A classic example of the life-history method in anthropology
is Marjory Shostak’s ethnography, Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung
Woman. Nisa, a woman from a mobile hunting and gathering community in
southern Africa, shared stories from her life with Shostak. The life history
approach helps readers compassionately imagine the complex experiences of
women in hunter gatherer communities with childhood, relationships,
motherhood, and aging.

A survey involves asking the same set of questions to everyone that you
sample, often in the form of a questionnaire. If it is not possible to survey
everyone in the population, a random sample with enough participants can
produce data that can be generalized to the entire group. For example,
anthropology students in the Indiana University of Pennsylvania’s
Environmental Anthropology class worked with the local community garden
for one year. The Indiana Borough community garden is comprised entirely
of volunteers who apply for garden plots each season. Students did
participant observation at the garden to learn about the use of this space, and
the kind of community that took shape around it. They interviewed garden
leaders and members about why they participated in the garden, how it was
meaningful to them, and what their aspirations were. They then conducted
a survey to see how widespread these ideas were across all garden
members. The survey also gave students a portrait of how diverse the garden

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members were across social class, race, ethnicity, and gender. This data
helped inform the garden leadership in their efforts to diversify their
members and deepen their role within the community.

Figure 3.1. Indiana University of Pennsylvania anthropology student

interviewing a participant from the local community garden. Image courtesy
of L. Homsey-Messer.

Figure 3.2. A restaurant in a refugee camp in Northern Ethiopia. Image

courtesy of A. Poole.

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Ethics in Cultural Anthropology

Ethical considerations are central to every single step of ethnographic

research, from the earliest planning stages to well after the research has been
made public. Anthropologists make difficult ethical decisions while doing
research on complex topics. In doing so, we are guided by a set of principles
established by the American Anthropological Association. The first and
most important principle is “do no harm.” Even if the result of adhering to
this code is to cancel a research project altogether, our primary obligation is
to avoid causing harm to research participants in terms of their bodily
wellbeing, material wellbeing, and dignity. One primary way that
anthropologists work to ensure that their research does not harm participants
is through anonymity, meaning that the identities of research participants
are protected by omitting identifying characteristics. Pseudonyms (invented
names) are used for people and are sometimes used for towns and
institutions, depending on the sensitivity of the topic and potential for
research participants to be identified.

Another core ethical principal guiding ethnographic research is to be open

and honest regarding our research, including our methods, sponsors, goals,
and intended outcomes. Anthropologists do not trick or deceive people to
see what they will do in certain situations or omit information that might
influence someone’s willingness to participate in a research study. A closely
related ethical principal involves informed consent. Anthropologists
explain the goals, methods, funding, outcomes, and potential risks and
benefits to all potential study participants to ensure that their participation is
voluntary and fully informed. Often, informed consent is done in writing
with a document signed by the research participant, but there are situations
in which written consent is not possible or appropriate, and informed
consent must be conducted and documented in other ways. U.S. federal
regulations protect human subjects involved in research, including
ethnographic research. Federal regulations also require informed consent
and includes particular consideration for vulnerable human subjects such as
children, people who are incarcerated, or economically disadvantaged
people. At academic institutions, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) review
research that is proposed by students or faculty to evaluate them to ensure

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that the methods proposed comply with these federal regulations.

Writing and Rendering Ethnography

One of the goals of ethnographic fieldwork is grasping the emic

perspective, which refers to local understandings and interpretations, in
contrast to the etic perspective, which refers to the perspective or
interpretation of the outside expert. If the emic perspective is missing from
research, then policies and programs based on that research may fail to meet
the needs of local communities, or worse, may exacerbate problems. At the
same time, etic perspectives can provide important insight by drawing from
concepts in anthropology and cross-cultural comparison. Anthropological
writing blends both perspectives by sharing emic perspectives and analyzing
them to explore what they teach us about the world.

Emic perspectives are prioritized in ethnographic writing using

polyvocality, which refers to the presence of multiple voices in a text. In
ethnographic writing, this involves direct quotes from research participants
who have shared stories and perspectives in their own words. Another
convention of ethnographic writing involves reflexivity, or a reflection on
the role played by the anthropologist in the process of conducting research,
particularly in terms of the ways in which the anthropologist’s identity may
shape fieldwork. How might age, gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, or
nationality influence the ease with which particular topics can be
addressed? Ethnographies are often written in such a way that these aspects
are explored as a fundamental dynamic of the fieldwork process.

Much ethnography is in written form, but there is also a strong tradition

in anthropology of rendering ethnography in creative formats including
video, theater, and dance. Ethnographic work can use visual images and
video to document social life and events, along with exploring issues of
representation, framing, and interpretation. Participatory photography is a
visual research method in which people use photography to document,
explore, and dialogue about social issues and potential solutions in their own
communities (see Figure 3.3).

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Figure 3.3. A participatory photography project youth in Chiquimula,

Guatemala was designed to better understand and include local knowledge
and needs in agricultural policy and research. Photocredits: Manon
Koningstein (International Center for Tropical Agriculture, CIAT)

While film can be a powerful medium to convey ethnographic data and

insight, performative ethnographers explore culture through the medium of
theater. Ethnographies can be performed to audiences in ways that explore
complex social conflicts, unsettle assumptions, and help people imagine
themselves in other roles. Similarly, dance can be a medium through which
anthropologists explore cultural identity, tradition, hybridity, power, and
representation. Katherine Dunham was an African American
anthropologist who pioneered dance anthropology, ran the only self-
supported Black dance troupe of her time, and was a racial justice activist.

Fieldwork Skills for Life

Ethnographic fieldwork skills are also life skills. Fieldwork is a learning

process during which the fieldworker is open to learning new things and can
synthesize new information. This involves cultural relativism, recognizing
and respecting that people’s experiences, perspectives, and cultures
vary. Fieldwork also means asking sound questions that can get at

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meaningful data, paying attention to detail, active listening, building

thoughtful and ethical relationships with others, and recognizing social
networks to work within them. Fieldworkers must also constantly evaluate
the validity of their findings, which involves the capacity to think
critically. Finally, the unexpected often happens during ethnographic
research. People might wind up caring a lot more about a topic other than
the one you thought was most important to focus your research on, thereby,
prompting a shift in focus. Uncomfortable moments happen; particularly, in
places where the local language and culture are unfamiliar. You may say
something that seems perfectly reasonable to you but winds up being
offensive to the people you are working with. Fieldwork involves being able
to adapt to changing circumstances with self-reflection.

There is another way that ethnographic skills can be broadly relevant. In

her brilliant TED TalkTED talk, Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie warns
of “the danger of a single story” (see Module 1: Introduction to
Anthropology). Stories, she argues, are powerful in the way that we use them
to make sense of the world and shape our interactions. However, when we
have limited stories about groups of people, or one story is used as the only
story of that group, this leads to stereotypes. Learning and listening to many
stories can open up entirely new worlds and ways of thinking and
communicating. Learning multiple stories also makes it harder to
dehumanize people. To dehumanize is to attribute less than human
characteristics to a group of people or to strip them of positive human
attributes like dignity, agency, intelligence, kindness, or compassion. Adichie
argues that “[w]hen we realize that there is never a single story about any
place, we regain a kind of paradise,” and it makes it possible to recognize our
equal humanity. Ethnography is the methodology in cultural anthropology
that breaks down the single story.

Video 3.2. Check out the video about TED talk featuring
Chimamanda Adichie discussing the dangers of a single
story online for more details!

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Archaeological Research Methods

In North America, archaeology developed as a part of the four-field

approach in anthropology. Through this approach, archaeology is intimately
connected with cultural, biological, and linguistic anthropology. This is
different than in Europe, where archaeology and anthropology are often
treated as separate fields, with archaeology being more closely related to
history. Here, we describe the development of basic archaeological
approaches in North America, including how archaeologists excavate and
interpret human behaviors from archaeological sites and artifacts.

Foundational to archaeological research is the connection between

present-day activities and cultural items from the past. The Direct Historical
Approach arose based on cultural anthropological work. Anthropologists
such as Frank Cushing, in his study of Zuni culture, and Franz Boas, in his
studies of Inuit cultures, realized the connection between human behaviors
and artifact patterning in the present. Although many nations were forced
from their traditional lands in other regions, early anthropologists, such as
Cushing and Boas, had the opportunity to study and interact with indigenous
peoples still living in their ancestral homelands. When past artifacts were
uncovered from archaeological sites, indigenous nations could sometimes
provide insight into mysterious objects with unknown purposes. Many
indigenous groups also possessed comprehensive oral traditions that linked
their cultures with significant sites in the region. Early archaeologists
appreciated that they could learn about the past by working backwards from
the present. However, in many cases, archaeological sites were found in areas
where indigenous groups no longer lived. Many of these sites were
abandoned when Europeans first arrived in North America but, even in
ruins, they captivated the imaginations of early archaeologists (see Figure 3.4).

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Figure 3.4. Modern day view and artistic reconstructions of Monks

Mound (a, b), Serpent Mound (c, d) and Poverty Point (e, f). Image
modified from Wikimedia Commons.

Traditionally, archaeology is a destructive discipline. To learn about sites,

interpret past cultural behaviors, and understand how people lived,
archaeologists may excavate sediments to unearth cultural items and reveal
site layouts. Once these sites are excavated, however, they cannot be
returned to their pre-excavated state, nor can they be re-
excavated. Archaeology is a one-time opportunity to learn about past
peoples, and archaeological sites are essentially non-renewable
resources. There is no second opportunity to excavate. Therefore, it is
imperative to work carefully and accurately document all information,
preserving it for future generations. We discuss the ethical implications of
archaeological excavation further below.

Telling Time

Telling time is one of the most fundamental goals of archaeological

research. Archaeologists can accomplish this in two ways: the first is through
absolute dating. A familiar form of absolute dating is tree rings; trees grow
one ring per year (baring droughts or other climate extremes). So, to
determine how old a tree is, we simply count the rings. Another form is
radiometric dating, which is based on the spontaneous radioactive decay of
certain elemental isotopes, such as carbon-14 (C14) and potassium-40, into
new elements. This rate of decay is constant, so scientists can date materials
by measuring the amount of isotope remaining in a sample and comparing
that to the original amount. For example, C-14 decays over time into a new

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element—Carbon 12—such that over time, there is more C12 than C14 in
the sample relative to the atmosphere today. While there are a few things
that can complicate radiometric dating, such sample contamination and
modern fossil fuel emissions, it remains a reliable and dependable way to date
archaeological sites. Radiometric dating can be expensive, however, and so
archaeologists often depend on relative dating as well. Relative dating
means that we can determine the age of an archaeological layer or artifact
based on whether it is older or younger relative to something else. Below,
we describe two common methods of relative dating: stratigraphy and
seriation.

Beneath the ground surface, there are layers of soil that correspond with
different times in the past. Stratigraphy is the study of sediment layers in
the ground. Developed in geology, this technique allows archaeologists to
recognize different cultural and natural events in the past. You can identify
past ground surfaces, old fire hearths, the remnants of cellars, old walls and
structures, and natural events like flooding or volcanic activity. By excavating
into the soil, layers of dirt are revealed by different colors, thicknesses,
textures, and artifact contents. These layers resemble layers of a cake with
multiple layers of icing and cake (see Figure 3.5). These stratigraphic layers
act as time capsules of past activities that retain information of both cultural
and non-cultural events.

Figure 3.5. Example of archaeological stratigraphy. Image modified from

Homsey-Messer et al. 2020.

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The Law of Superposition states that in undisturbed stratigraphic layers,

the oldest materials are the first deposited and, hence, the deepest
underground. The newest, or youngest, materials overlay the older materials
and are closer to the ground surface. The ground surface represents present
times, but researchers can see the past by excavating deeper and deeper into
soil layers below. Researchers work backwards from the present to
document change, though it is rarely so straightforward. Stratigraphy can
only show you the sequence of events (before and after); it does not provide
absolute, calendar dates, or durations of events and occupations. In other
words, someone can determine that Stratum A is younger than Stratum C,
but stratigraphy alone cannot be used to determine whether Stratum C
occurred 4,200 or 4.2 million years ago (see Figure 3.5).

Seriation is a way to relatively age artifacts and arrange them in sequences

from oldest to youngest. Often, people can easily seriate objects that they
use on a regular basis but to seriate artifacts from an uncommon culture can
be a more difficult feat. Archaeologists can accomplish seriation with objects
from other cultures because archaeologists are able to associate particular
artifacts with particular stratigraphic layers and document them accordingly.
In many cases, an artifact might be found in multiple stratigraphic layers,
suggesting its importance over time. When artifacts are present in multiple
stratigraphic layers, archaeologists can count the prevalence of artifacts in
each layer to determine frequency seriations, or changes in artifact
popularity over time (see Figure 3.6). For example, specific styles of vehicles
have fluctuated in popularity over time. Station wagons were most popular
between the 1950s and 1970s, representing the importance of reliability over
status or style in American vehicles at that time. However, they fell out of
popularity, are now much less common, and often disguised as sport wagons
or crossovers. In the 1980s and 1990s, sport utility vehicles (SUVs) rose in
popularity, representing a more fuel-efficient and stylish vehicle that fit the
perceived needs of the average American.

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Figure. 3.6. Schematic battleship curves for station wagons and SUVs (a)
and hypothetical curves and accompanying frequencies for archaeological
ceramic vessels (b). Adapted from Homsey-Messer et al. (2020: Figure 13.1)

Archaeologists can also document changes in artifact style over time to

understand stylistic seriations. For example, BMWs have changed in shape
and design over time, from boxy bulky vehicles to sleek curvy crossovers (see
Figure 3.7). Anyone familiar with vehicle trends can determine the relative
age of a single vehicle based on its overall design and curvature. If presented
with several BMWs, someone could most likely rank them from oldest to
youngest based on appearance.

Figure 3.7. Evolution of the BMW 5 series over time. Adapted from
Homsey-Messer et al. (2020: Figure 13.1).

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While archaeology has increasingly incorporated new technologies and

methods from other disciplines, these basic approaches are still
foundational. However, today there is an abundance of new and diverse
techniques, both destructive and non-destructive, that can be used to
precisely date materials, find lost archaeological sites, and analyze past
cultures. These approaches contribute to a highly advanced archaeology
where the number of questions one can ask about the past is limited only by
imagination.

Theoretical Perspectives

Video 3.3. Check out the video from Stanford about

Public Archaeology online for more details!

Archaeology is often divided between Precontact and Historic

Archaeology. Precontact archaeology is the study of cultures prior to contact
with Europeans, and Historic archaeology is the study of cultures during
and following contact with Europeans. Historic Archaeology developed in
North American in the late 1960s and 1970s to test the accuracy of historical
records and explore the lives of people not represented in written records. In
North America, this typically refers to anything within the last 500 years or
so. These research interests include, but are not limited to, the following: the
impacts of culture contact, how colonists adapted to new environments, the
lives of enslaved or newly freed peoples, and the intersection of political or
economic institutions with class, race, or gender. Well-known historical sites,
including Jamestown, Colonial Williamsburg, and the African Burial Ground
in New York, were some of the first or most prominent sites
excavated. More recently, however, efforts have focused on people and sites
with less visibility in the historic record. A good example of this is the
Marketstreet Chinatown Archaeology Project led by Barbara Voss at
Stanford University.

Most North American archaeologists work from what is called a

processual perspective, meaning that they are interested in discovering the

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underlying processes that shape culture. For example, they may be interested
in revealing the general process societies undergo that lead to social inequality
or the development of farming. Processual methods use the scientific
method: stating a hypothesis, testing the hypothesis with scientific
techniques, and using that to interpret past behaviors. We’ll discuss a critique
to processual archaeology later called post-processualist, but first, let’s look
at two processual approaches that have made a significant impact on the field
as a whole: ethnoarchaeology and experimental archaeology.
Ethnoarchaeology

Ethnoarchaeology represents archaeology’s return to cultural

anthropology for reinvigorating ideas about how to study the
past. Ethnoarchaeology is the study of living people—and the materials
left behind from their activities—to interpret archaeological patterns. This
approach is important when written records may be unavailable or
unreliable. Information is collected via cultural anthropology methods (like
participant observation) with the intention of identifying the how artifacts
and their distribution are formed from human behavior. For example,
archaeologists working in Peru engage in participant observation with
traditional chicha (i.e., maize beer) producers to recognize beer production
in prehistory. This is an activity that we now realize was widespread among
the Wari culture around AD 600. In another example, Pei-Lin Yu describes
how her ethnoarchaeological research revealed that an artifact that looked
like a sewing needle to the average American was actually ritualistic object; a
spine from a stingray’s tail and used to pierce the tongue to make it bleed as
an offering to the gods. Through this observation and participation,
archaeologists can interpret the behaviors of the past from artifacts and other
material remains with a more personal understanding. This cross-cultural
approach demonstrates the holistic nature of anthropology.

Video 3.4. Check out a video where Pei-Lin Yu describes

her ethnoarchaeological research and interprets ritual
objects online for more details!

In the 1970s, Mayan archaeologist William Rathje realized that students

might grasp artifact interpretation better if they examined their own culture
rather than unfamiliar Mayan pot sherds and stone flakes. This led to the

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birth of his now famous Garbology project, a modern-day archaeology

project in which he and his students examined Tucson, Arizona residents’
behaviors through both survey and excavation of the Tucson landfill.

Video 3.5. Check out a video with Garbologists

discussing present-day ethnoarchaeology online for
more details!

The team surveyed residents from certain neighborhoods about their

consumption practices such as the types of foods bought, eaten, thrown
away, or recycled. At the same time, the research team collected and sorted
garbage from those same neighborhoods. The garbage was treated according
to standard archaeological analytical methods: it was excavated
stratigraphically and classified according to type of garbage (e.g., food
remains, packaging, etc.). The garbage archaeological results were then
compared to the results from the surveys.

Rathje’s team discovered that people significantly underreported how

much they threw away and how much they consumed. For example, people
consistently underreported how much beer, soda, and other sugars and fats
they consumed. On the other hand, they overreported the amounts of fruit
and diet soda. Furthermore, during economic shortages, waste
increased. During the early 1970s, there was a beef shortage. Rather than
seeing beef become less common in the garbage, Rathje and his team noted
that people wasted three times as much beef compared to normal times. He
attributed this to factors such as unfamiliar cuts that people didn’t like or
couldn’t cook, or stockpiling meat that spoiled before it was used. Rathje
concludes that, like countless civilizations before us such as ancient Egyptians
and Mayans, Americans are in what archaeologists call the “Classic” period
within the cyclical rise and fall of societal development, in which resources
are abundant and waste happens at an incredible pace.

Experimental Archaeology: Understanding Through Doing

Experimental archaeology is a subfield of archaeology that attempts to

generate and test archaeological hypotheses, most often, by replicating or
approximating the feasibility of ancient technologies and activities. For

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example, to understand animal hide preparation, an archaeologist might

flintknap a stone scraper and use it to skin an animal and tan the hide using
traditional methods. To understand pottery breakage patterns, an
archaeologist might create pottery from locally sourced clays and test how
different inclusions mixed into the clay (e.g., shell or sand) impact the
strength of the pot. Archaeologists have also recently begun to
experimentally brew ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian beer
recipes. Using plant residues recovered from beer mugs and brew vats as a
starting point, Pat McGovern, also known as the “Beer Archaeologist,” has
teamed up with Dogfish Head brewing company to recreate
them. Experimental archaeology provides a personal, in-depth
understanding of how cultural items are made and considerations needed to
find and use raw resources.

Rapa Nui, also known as Easter Island, is one of the most remote islands
in the world. It is 2,300 miles west of South America, and 1,100 miles from
the next closest island (see Figure 3.8). Yet, Polynesian explorers reached the
volcanic island more than 1,200 years ago. They settled on the island, and
human populations and cultures thrived for hundreds of years. They had no
industrialized or mechanized labor, yet there are engineering feats at Rapa
Nui that elude researchers to this day.

Figure 3.8. Location of Rapa Nui in the Pacific Ocean (left) and the famous
moai statues (right). Images from Wikimedia Commons.

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One of the most intriguing mysteries of Rapa Nui is the large moai
statues. The moai are anthropomorphic statues made of stone that stand, on
average, 13-ft tall (range 3.8-71.9 ft) and weigh 14-tons (maximum 165
tons). They were carved from stone originating at the main quarry on the
island, and nearly 900 moai can be found across the island. Some are still at
the quarry, while others are located along the coast, facing inland with their
backs to the water. Still, others are “in transit” between the quarry and the
coast.

Researchers have long been puzzled about how the local populations were
able to move these massive statues across the island with limited tools and
materials. The island is not flat, and even the most optimal routes from the
quarry to the coast include miles of rough, hilly terrain. According to local
oral histories, the gods ordered the moai to walk to the coast. Researchers
initially discounted these beliefs and, instead, employed experimental
archaeology and tried various methods using rope and wood. For example,
one study included dragging a moai on wooden sleds. While 180 people
could move a smaller, 10-ton moai this way, researchers estimated that 1,500
people would have been required to move the largest moai. Would so many
people have been available to move the moai? Another study involved using
tree trunks as rollers, and this method provided a way to move the moai up
hills. Finally, several researchers decided to try to walk a statue, as described
in folklore, by using ropes to balance the moai upright and rocked the statue
in a walking motion, like a seesaw. These experimental archaeological
approaches allow researchers to engage with archaeological materials, relate
to them on a more personal level, and find creative ways to help interpret the
mysteries of the past.

Video 3.6. Check out a video with How experimental

archaeology helped archaeologists understand
“walking” moai statues online for more details!

Post Processual Archaeology

Post-processual archaeologists have argued that there are no universal

processes that can account for social phenomena like inequality and the

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adoption of farming. Rather, they argue that every culture has its own
historic context and, therefore, must be studied on its own merits. They also
focus more on the lived human experience, often seeking to find the voices
of groups marginalized or underrepresented in the written record such as
illiterate groups, poor or low-status individuals, or minorities. If history is
written by the victors, then what was never recorded or misrepresented about
other groups? Archaeologists seek to expose the untold truths behind
written records or stereotypical beliefs about people and cultures. A good
example of such a perspective in the Market Street Chinatown Archaeology
Project mentioned previously.

For several decades, archaeologists debated the pros and cons of the
processual and post-processual perspectives. This debate was often heated,
with folks squarely landing on one side or the other. Today, most
archaeologists recognize that this dichotomy is an over-simplification, and
many argue that we need to keep both perspectives in mind. They also note
that a post-processual approach need not preclude using the scientific
method. Today, many archaeologists would argue that they practice a blend
of these two approaches that some have dubbed the “processual-plus”
approach.

Ethics in Archaeology

Both processual and post-processual perspectives have led to important

ethical considerations in contemporary archaeological practice. One is the
preservation ethic, which stresses the importance of not completely
excavating an entire site but leaving some of it behind for future generations
who will have new research questions to ask, and new technologies at their
disposal for investigating those questions. For example, today we can extract
“chemical residues” from the inside of clay pots. These residues are starches
and fatty acids like cholesterol and triglycerides. We can even extract residues
from ancient beer brewing and reconstruct ancient beer recipes! This info
helps us understand directly what people ate, drank, and how they cooked,
which is something we couldn’t do until the past few decades. It is for this
reason that many archaeologists often prefer to study collections already
curated at museums rather than excavating new sites.

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A second important ethical consideration to emerge in the last couple of

decades is the rapid growth of indigenous archaeology. As mentioned in
the history module, indigenous archaeology, like the Pimu Catalina Island
Archaeology project, allows indigenous groups to take control of their own
history with a mixture of scientific and indigenous practices and
knowledge. As archaeologists reflect on the value of their work, many
recognize the importance of working with descendant groups in various ways
to enrich the questions asked, the stories they can tell, and to ensure that
archaeological interpretations are aligned with the needs and interests of
those descendent groups.

Summary

Anthropologists study human behavior in the present and the past. As a

holistic field that covers all aspects of humanity, there are many different
approaches an anthropologist may take. Regardless of subfield,
anthropologist’s unique toolkit and skill set enables them to conduct robust
research, appreciate the many ways of being human on our planet,
communicate fluently with diverse groups of people, and think critically and
reflectively.

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Review Questions

• T/F. Participant observation is an appropriate tool for

archaeologists, while stratigraphic analysis is often appropriate for
cultural anthropology research.
• T/F. The most robust emic perspectives incorporate
polyvocalities.
• T/F. Ethnographic interviews always use surveys to gather large
amounts of data that can provide generalized information about a
population.
• T/F. Ethnoarchaeology uses a blend of cultural anthropology and
archaeological methods to study living people and use those
observations as proxies to understand archaeological behaviors.
• T/F. It is best practice to excavate as much of an archaeological
site as possible.

Discussion Questions

• Can you think of ways you are an anthropologist in your daily life,
or a time when you’ve had to talk to people different from
you? Maybe you participated in a new activity like a church event or
sport. In what way did talking to people and participating help give
you an emic perspective?
• Why are ethical considerations and practices like informed consent
important in ethnographic research?
• An issue that arises with ethnoarchaeology is that anthropologists
cannot directly observe the past. Instead, we must hope that the
living people they observe are good surrogates for the archaeological
culture. Discuss the pros and cons of using ethnoarchaeology to
understand the past. Think about the geographic distance between
cultures, the difference in time, and the fact that no culture is static
but constantly changing.
• What are some dangers in using seriation to relatively date
artifacts? Think about how the popularity of styles may vary
geographically, even within a single culture? What happens if an
item has a second wave of popularity, decades, or centuries after the
first wave?

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Activities

1. Interview a person from another culture than the one you

are from, such as another country, ethnic group, or
community (e.g., deaf) that you are unfamiliar with.

• With their permission, and assurance of confidentiality,

ask a series of semi-structured questions that scaffold
your interview from less to more intimate. The
exchange of questions should go both ways, with both
of you asking and answering. For example, you might
begin with some questions such as what time is supper
in your culture? What is a symbolic color in your
culture? What is the most important holiday and why?
• Some questions of “medium” intimacy might include
that person’s “personal bubble” or an important rite of
passage?
• As you build a rapport with your “informant” and begin
to find common ground, you might feel comfortable
asking about more personal differences such as whether
they have experienced discrimination or cultural shock at
any point in their lives.
• As you move through the questions, did you discover
more or less commonality than you expected? Did you
gain an emic perspective that changed your original ideas
about that culture? Did you find it easier to broach
personal connections once you had established a rapport
with your informant?

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2. Material Culture

• Stratigraphic Analysis: Go to
https://la.utexas.edu/users/denbow/labs/lab1-
strat2.htm(opens in a new tab) and arrange the strata
from oldest to youngest. Then, answer the questions
provided about the features and artifacts present.
• Seriation: Think of three “artifacts” popular during your
lifetime. These can be physical items (e.g., iPhone),
social media apps (e.g., Snapchat), items of clothing (e.g.,
skinny jeans), vehicles (e.g., Tesla), etc. On a piece of
paper, label a vertical axis with date ranges, starting
about ten years before you were born, and going every
year (or every five years if space is limited). For artifact
one, draw a line to approximate the popularity of that
artifact. If it is very popular, draw a long line. If it is
unpopular, draw a short line, or none if appropriate.
Make the lines relative, such that they get longer the
more popular an artifact is, and shorter the less popular
an artifact is. When done, do you see the battleship
curve, or at least a portion of it?
• Campus Garbology: Download or sketch a map of your
campus. Over the next couple days, record the
provenience (i.e., location) of “artifacts”—that is,
trash—that you encounter as you move around campus
(you do NOT have to pick it up!). As you find it, record
the type of raw material (e.g., plastic, paper, metal, glass,
Styrofoam etc.), and note whether it is trash related to
subsistence (e.g., food consumption), domestic life,
academic life, and any other category you might think of
(e.g., pet, beauty/health). Even better, have several
friends do this. Then compile your data onto the map.
Imagine you are excavating this “site” millennia from
now, long after physical colleges and universities have

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been replaced by online programs. What patterns do

you see? Are artifacts dispersed or clustered? Could you
identify different kinds of activities even if you didn’t
know what the buildings were used for? What
inferences could you make about human (i.e., student)
behavior/lifestyle based on the dominant raw material?
What “post-depositional” processes—that is, things that
happened long after the site formed—might affect your
interpretations? Think about weather, natural hazards
and animals, and human activity.

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Key Terms

Absolute Dating: The determination of chronological age of a specimen

based on a specific time scale or calendar.

Anonymity: Anthropologists protect the identities of research participants

by omitting identifying characteristics; using pseudonyms (invented names)
for people and places is a common method.

Anthropological Toolkit: The methodological, ethical, and theoretical

approaches that cultural anthropologists use to conduct ethnographic
research.

Artifact: Objects made or used by people.

Cultural Consultant: People, such as community leaders, who become

central to ethnographic research as cultural guides, mentors, and translators.

Cultural Relativism: The idea that cultures must be understood on their

own terms and based on their own contexts instead of being judged by the
standards of a different culture.

Dehumanize: To attribute less than human characteristics to a group of

people, or strip them of positive human attributes like dignity, agency,
intelligence, kindness, or compassion.

Direct Historical Approach: An archaeological technique of working

backward in time from historic-period sites of known age to earlier times;
usually only used where little migration has occurred, such as in the American
Southwest with the Zuni culture.

Dunham, Katherine: An African American anthropologist who pioneered

dance anthropology, ran the only self-supported Black dance troupe of her
time, and was a racial justice activist.

Emic Perspective: A personal perspective of a culture developed within that

culture, through immersion and participation.

Ethnoarchaeology: The study of material artifacts of the past along with the
observation of modern peoples who have knowledge of the use and symbolic
meaning of those artifacts, to interpret archaeological patterns.

Ethnographer: The researchers that are the driving force behind

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ethnographic research. Ethnographers generate data, ask questions, build

rapport, and notice and record particular details.

Ethnographic Interviews: Interviews conducted during qualitative research

to establish a relationship with members of the group being studied. They
are often unstructured or semi-structured, meaning the researcher has a clear
plan or a list of pre-written interview questions, but the interview is fluid. It
is designed to prompt conversation, get people to open up, and let them
express themselves. Interview questions are often open-ended, as well.

Ethnography: A research strategy to observe and analyze the actions and

interactions of societies, to create a description of a society written by an
anthropologist who conducted field research in that society.

Etic Perspective: An outside, presumably objective or standardized,

perspective of a culture developed through observation and interview.

Excavate: Removing sediment systematically and carefully from an area to

unearth cultural items and reveal site layouts, in order to learn more about
sites, interpret past cultural behaviors, and understand how people lived.

Experimental Archaeology: A subfield of archaeology which uses carefully

controlled experiments to provide data to aid in interpreting archaeological
finds and procedures.

Frequency Seriations: The observed sequence of stylistic changes that allow

archaeologists to infer applicable cultural changes, based on the number of
artifacts of a particular style or type found in different stratigraphic layers.

Garbology: The modern-day archaeology project developed by Mayan

archaeologist William Rathje. He and his students examined Tucson,
Arizona residents’ behaviors through both survey and excavation of the
Tucson landfill.

Historic Archaeology: A form of archaeology which studies archaeological

sites in conjunction with text-based records and other kinds of information
and involves studying cultures as they existed during and following contact
with Europeans.

Indigenous Archaeology: Archaeology controlled by indigenous people

and consistent with native goals and values.

Informed Consent: An ethical and necessary step in a study where

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anthropologists explain the goals, methods, funding, outcomes, and potential

risks and benefits to all potential study participants to ensure that their
participation is voluntary and fully informed.

Law of Superposition: Layers of sediment or rock are older than layers

above them and younger than those below them unless they have been
disturbed by some natural of human process. This assumption forms the
basis of stratigraphic dating.

Life History: A method ethnographers use that focuses on individual stories,

in which a person is asked to recollect their experiences across various time
periods, providing intimate insight into past and current events.

Literature Review: An important step in preparing for research,

investigating, and synthesizing existing scholarship, often for the purpose of
clarifying research questions, methods, and goals.

Longitudinal: A type of long–term correlational research study that

observes variables over an extended period of time.

Mixed Methods: A study where both quantitative and qualitative

approaches are used.

Multi-sited: An approach to ethnographic research that investigates a social

phenomenon across various social actors and institutions.

Multi-timed: An approach to ethnographic research that focuses on

multiple time periods, often through longitudinal, or long-term, research
based on repeated visits.

Observation: One of the key methods in the ethnographic toolkit; structured

observations occur when the researcher tries not to interfere in what is
happening while they observe particular things often at pre-determined
intervals.

Participant Observation: An ethnographic research method where

researchers join a cultural group and participate to learn first-hand about a
culture.

Polysemic: In anthropology this term refers to the multiple layers of

meaning symbols can have.

Polyvocality: The presence of many voices in a text.

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Post-Processual Archaeology: A theoretical approach critical of processual

archaeology and emphasizing social factors and interactions in human
societies.

Preservation Ethic: An ethical consideration which stresses the importance

of not completely excavating an entire site, but rather leaving some of it
behind for future generations who will have new research questions to ask,
and new technologies at their disposal for investigating those questions.

Problem-oriented: Ethnographic research often focused on investigating a

particular issue or conflict.

Processual Archaeology: A theoretical approach critical of post-processual

archaeology that stresses the application of the scientific method and takes
an ecological and systems approach to explain cultural processes.

Radiometric Dating: A dating technique based on the spontaneous

radioactive decay of certain elemental isotopes, such as carbon-14 (C14) and
potassium-40, into new elements. This rate of decay is constant, so scientists
can date materials by measuring the amount of isotope remaining in a sample
and comparing that to the original.

Rapport: Building trust with research participants during participant

observation.

Rathje, William: The Mayan archaeologist who developed famous

Garbology project, a modern-day archaeology project in which he and his
students examined Tucson, Arizona residents’ behaviors through both
survey and excavation of the Tucson landfill.

Reflexivity: An anthropologist's examination of their role during the process

of conducting research, particularly when it comes to the way the
anthropologist's identity may shape their fieldwork.

Relative Dating: Determining the chronological age of a specimen, such as

an artifact, based on its relative position in a stratigraphic or typological
sequence, without reference to a specific time scale.

Salvage Ethnography: Documenting and recording the practices and

cultural beliefs of groups threatened with assimilation or extinction, often as
a result of globalization.

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Scientific Method: The systematic investigation of phenomena by

identifying a problem, developing hypotheses, testing implications, making
empirical observations, and reconsidering interpretations based on the results
obtained.

Seriation: A method used to relatively date artifacts and arrange them in

sequences from oldest to youngest based on variations in style and decoration
within assemblages, based on the theory that artifacts will resemble others
that are closest to them in time.

Stratigraphy: Analysis of the superimposed layers at an archaeological site,

may be used to determine relative dating among artifacts and features in a
site.

Structured Observation: When researchers collect data without direct

involvement in what is happening, while observing particular things and
participants often at pre-determined intervals.

Survey: Asking the same set of questions to a selected group often in the
form of a questionnaire.

Validate: The ability to demonstrate proof or the accuracy of

something. For example, participant observation is a craft that can help
validate data because it provides a general understanding of what things mean
and how they work in particular places.

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Suggested Readings

Cultural Anthropology

Banks, M. and Zeitlyn, D., 2015. Visual methods in social research.

Sage.

Bernard, H.R., 2017. Research methods in anthropology: Qualitative and

quantitative approaches. Rowman & Littlefield.

Chin, E., Cox, A.M., Davis, D.A., Marshall, A., Marshall, R. and
Ramsey, K., 2014. Katherine Dunham: Recovering an Anthropological
Legacy, Choreographing Ethnographic Futures. SAR Press.

Emerson, R.M., Fretz, R.I. and Shaw, L.L., 2011. Writing ethnographic
fieldnotes. University of Chicago Press.

Shostak, M., 1981. Nisa. Harvard University Press.

Vivanco, L.A., 2016. Field notes: A guided journal for doing anthropology.
Oxford University Press.

Archaeology

Dangerfield W. 2007. The mystery of Easter Island. Smithsonian

Magazine. Electronic document,
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/the-mystery-of-easter-island-
151285298/, accessed 12 February 2021.

Hodder, Ian. 2018. Post-Processual Archaeology. Encyclopedia of

Global Archaeology. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-51726-
1_269-2

PBS. 2000. Secrets of Easter Island. Nova. Electronic document,

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/easter/ , accessed 12 February 2021.

Rathje W, Murphy C. 2001. Rubbish! The Archaeology of Garbage. University

of Arizona Press, Tucson.

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Videos

Doing Anthropology.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhCruPBvSjQ

Adichie, Chimamanda Ngozi. 2009. The Danger of a Single Story.

TEDGlobal.
https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_dan
ger_of_a_single_story?language=en

Stanford Summer. 2014. Summer Intensive Course: Public Archaeology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lxb829nMaiE

Boise State University. 2015. Ethnoarchaeology.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wj3rX8Nqv3c, accessed 5
November 2021.

Vimeo. 2012. Garbologist-Talkin Trash.

https://vimeo.com/31570247, accessed 5 November 2021.

Nature Newstream. 2012. Easter Island moai ‘walked’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvvES47OdmY&featur
e=youtu.be, accessed 5 November 2021.

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