ANTH 1010H Chapter Notes - Chapter 4: Speciation, Cultural Relativism, Ethnography
3 Sep 2013
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Document Summary
Middle-range theory: a way of seeking accurate means for identifying and measuring specified properties of past cultural systems. Living archaeology, a form of ethnography that deals mainly with material remains. Archaeologists carry out living archaeology to document the relationships between human behaviour and the patterns of artifacts and food remains in the archaeological record. The use of carefully controlled modern experiments to provide data to aid in the interpretation of the archaeological record. The process that all cultures go through in time; opposite of stasis. Same as evolution, the change of a population from its ancestral state to a more modern state. An early cultural approach to change that incorrectly assumed that cultures evolved in a rather automatic fashion from savagery to barbarianism to civilization. The theoretical end result of natural selection on biological species; species are generally better adapted to their existing environment through time.
