Culture and Adaptation

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Culture and Adaptation

• Archaeological and anthropological perspectives
  on
• interaction of humans with their environments.
• ANTH 143
• Dr. Marco Meniketti

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• All photographs from
• Portraits by Steve McCurry

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Agenda

• www.sjsu.edu/people/marco.meniketti/courses/Adapt
• Review syllabus
• format
• Policies
• assignments
• Introduce framework
• Seminar format
• Introduce key issues and concept mapping

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Key Concepts

• Cultural adaptation
• cultural relativism
• empiricism
• ethnocentricism
• gender

• Natural selection
• socialization
• material culture correlates
• globalism

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Meta-trends

• Modernization
• Urbanization
• Globalism/Globalization
• Rapid environmental transformation
• Economic revolution / hegemony
• Is modernization good? Who benefits?

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Concept mapping

• Tool for exploring relationships and
  intersections
• Concept maps / graphic organizers

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Tool for analysis

• Establishing links
• Evaluating degree of influence
• Determining systemic connections
• Charting influences internal / external
• Drawing together seemingly unrelated phenomena

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Concept Mapping

• Initial efforts with single concept
• Links without modes
• Specific operation
• Connections perceived
• Basic role (gut feeling based on experience)
• No weighting or directionality
• Influence and feedback

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Your turn, with a partner

• Select a single concept and investigate the
  connections. Here are some possibilities
  motherhood, industry, patriotism, hunger,
  religion, driving, sport, oil, manhood
• Or come up with your own for this exercise.

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Begin with basic idea

• Follow the connections, then sort the related
  ideas in two categories
• internal external
• Example chart the links from the concept nature

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Ecological Systems

• Ecological Anthropology

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• Primarily material covered in Chapter 1, Human
  Adaptive Strategies

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Ecological systems

• Systemic feedback loops
• Human/environmental interaction
• Behaviors as strategies within environmental
  contexts
• Procurement systems

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Evolution, natural selection, genetics

• Darwin natural selection
• Wallace, natural selection
• Lyell uniformitarianism
• Mendel basics of genetic inheritance

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Evolution and adaptation

• Ecological systems
• Human ecology holds that humans do not simply
  interact with environment, but are an integral
  part of it.
• Ecosystems are comprised of energy transfers and
  feedback loops.
• Societies have direct and indirect influence on
  each node of energy transfer
• Human biology
• Invention of culture

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Culture is

• Learned behavior
• Imperfectly replicated
• Critical for survival
• And culture proscribes behavior

• Adaptive
• Integrated
• A response to environmental change

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Culture is integrated

• Interlocking institutions
• Proscribed behaviors
• Language and symbology linked
• Interlocked character of culture offers stability

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Adaptive

• Change is inevitable
• Adaptation is always opportunistic
• Adaptation does not imply change but leads to
  change over time as new systems and institutions
  become integtrated or replace older models.

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Behavior and Learning

• Enculturation
• Socialization
• Processes for becoming a functional member of a
  society learning the codes and rules.

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Procurement systems

• Foraging (gathering and hunting)
• Pastoralism
• Subsistence horticulture
• Intensive agriculture
• Industrial agriculture
• Each of these systems can be investigated
  archaeologically across space and time.

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Questions to ponder for next time
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Power and Resources

• How do the concepts of power and resources relate
  to one another?
• What are the meta-trends affecting global
  interactivity?
• How do these interactions differ from the past?

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AssignmentsIf you have not already done so

• Check my faculty web page Announcements 143 for
  pdf readings
• Read chapter 1 in Bate
• Read articles 23
• Practice a simple concept map for links between
  topics

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stop
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Procurement adaptation

• Foraging

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Archaeological evidence

• Archaic humans move out from Africa in two waves
• Out of Africa Theory
• Wave one 2 million years ago
• Wave two 150,000 years ago

• Modern humans appear in the archaeological
  deposits 40,000 years ago.
• Evidence from camps, butchering sites, ecofacts.

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Foraging adaptation

• Seasonal
• Resource base
• Division of labor
• System of reciprocity
• Small groups
• Environmental limiting factors
• Band level organization

• Semi-egalitarian
• Limited effort at grand scale
• Mobile units
• Dispersed social groups
• Few foraging societies exist today

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Mobility and Settlement patterns

• Example Dobe Ju/hoansi
• (formerly referred to as !Kung)

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Only lions eat alone

• Band level organization
• General reciprocity
• Mobility determined by seasonal rainfall
• Sexual division of labor

• Traditional territory shrinking owing to border
  politics
• Diverse diet. Meat only 25
• Limited exchange with other groups
• Limited population

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Patterns

• Communal
• Small scale
• Seasonal
• Semi-egalitarian
• Gregarious

• Multi band gatherings serve vital functions for
  trade, marriage, and reciprocal exchange