Chapter 1
The Essence of Anthropology
MULTIPLE CHOICE
1. Anthropology is _______________.
a. the study of Western culture primarily through the analysis of its folklore
b. the study of humankind everywhere, throughout time
c. the study of nonhuman primates through an analysis of their myth and folklore
d. the study of the species Homo sapiens by analyzing its biological but not its cultural
dimensions
e. the analysis of humankind from the subjective perspective of one group
2. Although human beings always have been interested in other human beings,
anthropology has emerged as a tradition of scientific inquiry over the last
_______________.
a. 10,000 years
b. 700 years
c. 150 years
d. 50 years
e. 30 years
3. In human evolutionary studies, physical anthropologists known as _______________
look at fossilized skeletons of our ancestors to reconstruct the complex path of human
evolution.
a. molecular anthropologists
b. archaeologists
c. forensic anthropologists
d. ethnohistorians
e. paleoanthropologists
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4. Which of the following are not primates?
a. Asian and African apes
b. tarsiers
c. monkeys
d. lemurs and lorises
e. all of the above are primates
5. How does the perception of organ transplantation differ between the U.S. and Japan?
a. It is performed more frequently in Japan because they have developed a more
efficient harvesting system.
b. It is rarely performed in Japan because they do not believe in a mind-body split.
c. It is performed more frequently in the U.S. because there is no belief in a mind-body
split.
d. It is rarely performed in the U.S. because the cultural system does not endorse the
idea of anonymous “gifts.”
e. The perception of organ transplantation does not differ significantly between the U.S.
and Japan.
6. Anthropology is different from other disciplines that study humans because
_______________.
a. it was the first science to study human beings
b. it synthesizes data from many fields in an effort to describe human behavior as a
whole
c. it has greater attention to details
d. it requires a longer period of training
e. it focuses primarily on contemporary Western societies
7. Which of the following is not a traditional field or subdiscipline of anthropology?
a. cultural anthropology
b. applied anthropology
c. physical anthropology
d. archaeology
e. linguistics
8. _______________ specializes in the identification of human skeletal remains for legal
purposes.
a. Ethnology
b. Paleoanthropology
c. Forensic anthropology
d. Archaeology
e. Medical anthropology
9. Which of the following is not one of the four branches of anthropology?
a. archaeology
b. linguistics
c. biology
d. cultural anthropology
e. physical anthropology
10. Which of the following statements about cultural anthropology is/are correct? Cultural
anthropologists study _______________.
a. humans as biological organisms because the capacity for culture is rooted in our
biological natures
b. how some people are “more cultured” than others
c. the rules or standards of behavior by which societies operate
d. learned behavior rather than those acquired through biological inheritance
e. c and d
11. As part of your job, you may study the frequency of blood types in human populations, or
watch the behavior of monkeys and apes, or dig for early hominid bones in East Africa.
You are a/an _______________.
a. ethnologist
b. primatologist
c. ethnographer
d. physical anthropologist
e. cultural anthropologist
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12. Which of the following are broad research interests of physical anthropologists?
a. descriptive ethnography and culture-bound theory
b. fingerprinting and study of hair loss
c. biological variation in human populations and evolution of human characteristics
d. primate population variation and the reconstruction of the material remains of culture
e. the study of the origins of language and what causes language change
13. Cross-cultural research that allows the anthropologist to develop theories that help
explain why certain important differences or similarities occur between groups is known
as _______________.
a. ethnography
b. biography
c. ethnology
d. ethnohistory
e. ethnoarchaeology
14. Cultural anthropology is the study of patterns of human behavior. These standards
_______________.
a. are biologically inherited
b. operate only when people are unconscious
c. can be studied only by sociologists
d. focus on humans as culture producing and re-producing creatures
e. are inherited and are studied initially by physical anthropologists
15. In general, ethnologists study _______________.
a. cultures as they have been observed, experienced, and discussed with persons whose
cultures they seek to understand
b. animal behavior, with the aim of making useful comparisons with human behavior
c. various kinds of insects, because the social order of insect groups can tell us
something about human social systems
d. the languages through which culture is transmitted, shaped, and experienced
e. the processes through which people come to understand the methods of social science
16. A “culture–bound” theory is _______________.
a. a prediction that is bound to be fulfilled in a particular culture
b. a theory developed by a cultural anthropologist rather than a physical anthropologist
c. a theory developed by a sociologist rather than a cultural anthropologist
d. a theory based on assumptions common to a particular culture rather than deriving
from comparisons of many different cultures
e. a theory based on comparison of cultures
17. Which of the following is not a change that has affected ethnography during the 20th
century?
a. use of participant observation
b. technological change
c. increasing numbers of non-Western peoples have become anthropologists
d. focus on Western industrialized societies
e. collaboration among anthropologists in varied communities
18. A detailed description of a particular culture based on fieldwork is called
_______________.
a. ethnography
b. biography
c. ethnology
d. ethnohistory
e. ethnoarchaeology
19. A study of how people deal with consumer complaints would be a research interest of the
_______________.
a. applied anthropologist
b. physical anthropologist
c. medical anthropologist
d. molecular anthropologist
e. ethnolinguist
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20. An archaeologist studies material remains and environmental data to understand
_______________.
a. old rocks
b. fossils
c. human culture
d. future species
e. how oil is formed from ancient plants
21. An archaeologist has a research project involving the analysis of an old campsite of a
people who relied primarily on foraging for wild foods about 500,000 years ago. This
project would be considered _______________.
a. Arctic
b. prehistoric
c. futuristic
d. historical
e. culture-bound
22. An archaeologist might attempt to study _______________.
a. material remains to reconstruct past cultures
b. present languages to reconstruct when they diverged from a parent stock
c. garbage to explain contemporary behavior
d. all of these
e. a and c
23. The Garbage Project in Tucson demonstrated that what people say and what they do can
differ dramatically. For instance, investigators found that _______________.
a. no one claimed to use hair coloring but many empty packages of hair dye were found
in the trash
b. people claimed to take vitamins daily but the number of empty vitamin bottles did
not support this claim
c. women who said they bought no new clothes in the last month in fact had discarded
tags and sales slips from clothing stores in their trash
d. no one said they drank Scotch, but several empty Johnny Walker bottles were found
in the trash
e. the amount of beer consumed, according to empty cans in the trash, was far higher
than people claimed
24. Historians, who usually study the past through written sources, are limited chronologically
to _______________.
a. the past 500 years
b. the past 1,000 years
c. the past 5,000 years
d. the past 10,000 years
e. the past 500,000 years
25. The branch of anthropology that studies human languages is called _______________.
a. linguistic anthropology
b. ethnology
c. ethnography
d. ethnolinguistics
e. ethnography of speaking
26. Humans appear to be unique in having a complex system of symbolic communication,
called _______________, that enables humans to preserve and transmit culture from
generation to generation.
a. the brain
b. language
c. genes
d. cuneiform
e. Esperanto
27. The work of medical anthropologists sheds light on the connections between
_______________ both globally and locally.
a. human migration and the maintenance of health
b. culture and personality
c. mental and physical health
d. human health and political and economic forces
e. HMOs and political and economic forces
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28. Which of the following research projects would not belong to the province of linguistic
anthropology?
a. Learning about a culture by finding out which objects or events are associated with a
large vocabulary
b. Reconstructing the evolution of the big toe to find out at what time humans began to
walk upright
c. Comparing languages to see which ones can be traced back to a single unifying
language
d. Describing how, in a particular language, sounds are combined to form words, and
how words are combined to form sentences
e. all of these (that is, a linguistic anthropologist would not be interested in any of the
above research projects)
29. An ethnologist can be described as someone who _______________.
a. studies female behavior
b. studies cultures of the past
c. develops a theory of culture by comparing many specific cultures
d. studies primitive cultures
e. studies urban-industrial societies
30. In-depth descriptive studies of specific cultures are called _______________.
a. ethnologies
b. ethnobotanies
c. biologies
d. ethnographies
e. anthropologies
31. The protection of cultural resources as part of archaeology is called _______________.
a. ethnographic resource management
b. cultural resource management
c. cultural resource administration
d. cultural area management
e. cultural resource excavation
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32. Anthropologists doing fieldwork typically involve themselves in many different
experiences. They try to investigate not just one aspect of culture (such as the political
system) but how all aspects relate to each other (for example, how the political system
fits with economic institutions, religious beliefs, etc.). This approach is called the
_______________ perspective.
a. holistic
b. ethnological
c. sociocultural
d. sociological
e. culture-bound
33. Which of the following would not indicate cooking or food processing at archaeological
sites?
a. pottery
b. hearths
c. temple ruins
d. animal bone fragments
e. concentrations of charcoal
34. Ethnographic fieldwork _______________.
a. is usually associated with the study of wealthy elites
b. is usually associated with the study of North American society
c. is usually associated with the study of non-Western peoples
d. can also be applied to the study of Western industrialized societies
e. c and d
35. Clyde Snow is an anthropologist who _______________.
a. studied the Zapotec of Mexico
b. went to Truk and studied drinking behavior
c. used forensic evidence to investigate “disappearances” in Argentina
d. advised the U.S. government about how to implement the New Deal
e. found out that a questionnaire administered to rural Peruvians wasn’t accurate in
what it implied about their behavior
36. Besides interest in descriptions of particular cultures, the ethnologist is interested also in
_______________.
a. destroying particular cultures to improve them
b. cross-cultural comparisons
c. descriptions of nonhuman societies
d. promoting Western ways
e. teaching food foragers how to use time-saving gadgets
37. By comparing housework in different cultures, the ethnologist learns that
_______________.
a. food foragers spend less time on household tasks than Westerners do
b. food foragers spend more time on household tasks than Westerners do
c. Westerners spend the least amount of time on household tasks as compared with
other societies
d. there are no differences in the amount of time spent on household tasks between food
foragers and industrialized Western societies
e. food foragers do not do housework
38. Which of the following is not goal of science?
a. to discover the universal principles that govern the workings of the visible world
b. to develop explanations of the world that are testable and correctable
c. to eliminate the need to use the imagination
d. all of these are goals of science
e. only a and b
39. Which of the following exemplifies the concept of a “hypothesis”? The light bulb failed
to light because _______________.
a. the filament was broken
b. the power to the building was off
c. it was not screwed in tightly
d. it was poorly made
e. all of these
40. A(n) _______________ is a closely examined and critically checked out explanation of
observed reality.
a. attractive hunch
b. dogma
c. doctrine
d. indisputable opinion
e. theory
41. Suzanne Leclerc-Madlala worked with traditional healers in what country in order to
promote greater awareness and effectiveness in addressing HIV/AIDS rates?
a. the United States
b. Kenya
c. South Africa
d. Rwanda
e. Liberia
42. Approximately how many individuals worldwide are infected by HIV today?
a. 40 million
b. 17 million
c. 4 million
d. 23 percent
e. 67 million
43. Zulu healers have addressed the AIDS epidemic by all of the following except
_______________.
a. by providing standard health care, regardless of the patient’s cultural background
b. by providing mental health care as well as physical care
c. by providing referrals to local clinics and hospitals
d. by providing refuge to those who are ostracized from their families because of the
disease
e. by providing their homes to be used as orphanages
44. The end product of anthropological research is _______________.
a. culture-bound theories
b. a set of scientific facts
c. a clear understanding of the advantages of adaptation
d. a broad hypothesis about human beliefs, behavior and biology
e. a single case study that tests a theory
45. In 1948, anthropologists discovered that aborigines in Arnhem Land were able to sustain
themselves well on an average workday of _______________.
a. approximately 8 hours
b. more than 10 hours
c. less than 6 hours
d. less than 2 hours
e. 10-12 hours
46. Ideally, theories in anthropology are generated from _______________.
a. intensive fieldwork done in a single society
b. worldwide comparisons so that statements made about culture will be universally
applicable
c. worldwide questionnaire surveys
d. intuitive thinking about society and culture based on experiences in your own society
e. the theories about culture formulated by the people you have studied
47. Which of the following questions would cross-cultural research be suited to answer?
a. What is the relationship between child-rearing practices (e.g., whether and for how
long a child sleeps with its mother) and the occurrence and intensity of rites of
passage?
b. Are attitudes about authority reflected in a society’s religious beliefs?
c. What was the rate and process of permanent settlement among Tibetan pastoral
nomads after the Chinese invaded Tibet?
d. a and b
e. a, b, and c
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48. The anthropologists who focus on humans as biological organisms, tracing their
evolutionary development and looking at biological variations within the species, past
and present are known as _______________.
a. archaeologists
b. linguistic anthropologists
c. biologists
d. physical anthropologists
e. forensic anthropologists
49. What is the best way to ensure that a people has the right to maintain their own culture?
a. allow them to collaborate with and contribute to the anthropologist’s study
b. make a cross-cultural comparative study
c. determine the most important facts that are relevant to the study
d. only allow the individuals studied to write the ethnography
e. do a sample study of various communities in the area
50. Anthropology studies the language of a culture, its philosophy, and its forms of art; and
in the process of doing research, ethnographers involve themselves intensively in the
lives of those they study, trying to experience culture from their informants’ points of
view. In this sense, anthropology is _______________.
a. scientific
b. humanistic
c. radical
d. conservative
e. systematic
51. Anthropology has been called the most human of the sciences because
_______________.
a. it has developed a systemic, cross-cultural approach to understanding human
behavior
b. it takes human beings as its subject matter (“the study of humankind”)
c. it develops hypotheses and theories about the organization of language, values, and
art in culture
d. it tackles culture as a human experience or system of meaning in which the
anthropologist must involve himself/herself in order to develop adequate
explanations of what is being observed
e. all of these
52. The anthropologist has to consider obligations to three sets of people:
a. the anthropologist’s family, government, and people studied.
b. the people who funded the study, the anthropologist’s government, and the people
who were studied.
c. the profession of anthropology, other anthropologists who have studied your
community, and the community you studied.
d. the anthropologist’s students, parents, and the people studied.
e. the profession of anthropology, the people who funded the study, and the people
studied.
53. Globalization is driven by _______________.
a. technological innovations
b. higher communication costs
c. faster knowledge transfers
d. all of the above
e. a and c only
54. Your authors suggest that in order to survive effectively in the modern world,
_______________.
a. we must promote American values
b. we must interpret the political actions of other nations in terms of the cultural and
political norms of our own culture
c. Americans must give up their powerful economic and political role in the world
d. Americans must trust their political leaders to handle the complex issues which are
beyond the understanding of individual citizens
e. none of these
55. One well-known forensic anthropologist is _______________.
a. Sheilagh Brooks
b. Bernardo Arriaza
c. Jennifer Thompson
d. Clyde C. Snow
e. none of these