Anthropology 101 – Flashcards
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Ethnography is:
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the firsthand, personal study of local settings.
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How are cultural rights different from human rights?
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Cultural rights are vested in groups, not in individuals.
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What are the four main subdisciplines of anthropology?
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Biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, cultural anthropology, and archaeology
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Current evidence suggests that the last common ancestor of hominins and the African apes existed
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6 to 8 m.y.a.
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Ethnology is:
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the comparative, generalizing aspect of cultural anthropology.
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Evolution can be defined most simply as
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Descent with modification.
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How does survey research differ from ethnography?
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Survey research generally focuses on a subset of a larger population.
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In evolutionary terms, what does fitness refer to?
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An organism's ability to survive and reproduce
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Of the following nonhuman primates, which are most comparable to humans?
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Terrestrial primates
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The American Anthropological Association's Code of Ethics is
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designed to ensure that all anthropologists are aware of their obligations to the field of anthropology, the host communities that allow them to conduct their research, and to society in general.
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The emergence of agriculture in at least seven different regions of the world is an example of
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Independent invention.
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The pressurized cabin of an airplane flying at high altitude provides an example of a(n)
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cultural adaptation
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The process by which children learn culture is known as
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enculturation.
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The tendency of people living in the Peruvian Andes to develop a voluminous chest and lungs for life at very high altitudes provides an example of a(n)
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genetic adaptation
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What are the two major components of fieldwork in archaeological anthropology?
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Systematic survey and excavation
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What distinction does Kottak draw between culture and society?
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People share society (organized life in groups) with other animals, but culture is distinctly human.
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What do anthropological archaeologists study?
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Material remains
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What does natural selection act on?
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The phenotypes of organisms
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What does "evolution" actually refer to (i.e., how do we measure it)?
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Changes in gene frequency (proportions of each genotype in population over time)
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What is cultural relativism?
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The argument that behavior in a particular culture should not be judged by the standards of another culture
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What is paleoanthropology?
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The study of hominid evolution and human life as revealed by the fossil record
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What is the term for an expert on a particular aspect of local life?
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Key cultural consultant
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What is the term for cultural change that results when two or more cultures have continuous firsthand contact?
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Acculturation
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What is the term for processes that are causing nations and people to be increasingly interlinked and mutually dependent?
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Globalization
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What is the term for the process in which certain traits of one sex are selected because of advantages they confer in winning mates?
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Sexual selection
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What is the term for the processes by which organisms cope with environmental forces and stresses?
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Adaptation
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What role do independent assortment and recombination play in evolution?
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They create genetic variability in a breeding population.
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What term refers to an organism's evident traits, or physical appearance?
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Phenotype
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What term refers to the study of a community, region, society, or culture over time?
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Longitudinal research
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Which of the following are great apes?
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All of the above. (Chimpanzee, Orangutan, Gorilla)
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Which of the following human traits does not have rudimentary building blocks in place in non-human primates, particularly great apes?
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Writing
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Which of the following is not a characteristic field technique used by ethnographers?
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Telephone questionnaires
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Which of the following is not an absolute dating technique?
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Stratigraphy
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Which of the following is not an adaptive trend in anthropoids?
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Decreased sociality
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Which of the following is not one of the ways in which individuals learn culture?
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Genetic transmission
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Which of the following is used as a basis for assigning organisms to the same taxon (zoological category)?
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Homologies
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Which of the following statements about cultural relativism is not true?
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Cultural relativism argues that some cultures are relatively better than others
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Why do anthropological archaeologists use relative dating?
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To create a relative chronology for the materials uncovered during excavation
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Why do human populations living in temperate, northern climates generally have light skin color?
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It helps to prevent rickets.
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Why is it important to understand that human racial categories are based upon perceptions of phenotypic features and not on genotypes?
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Because race is socially constructed, not biologically determined
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Which of the following is a cultural universal?
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Some kind of family
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What are cultural particulars?
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Features unique to a given culture, not shared with any others
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What is ethnocentrism?
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Viewing another culture in terms of your own culture and values
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Which of the following statements about culture is not true?
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Human groups differ in their capacities for culture.
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Which of the following is not a distinctive feature of four-field anthropology?
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It has an exclusive focus on contemporary cultures.
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A scientist who studies the fossil record of human evolution is a(n)
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paleoanthropologist.
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Which of the following features do humans not share with other primates?
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Habitual, obligatory bipedalism
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Which of the following is not part of Darwin's theory of evolution?
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Catastrophism
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Rather than attempting to classify humans into racial categories, biologists and anthropologists are
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seeking to explain why specific biological variations occur.
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What is special about Pierolapithecus catalaunicus?
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It is a possible Miocene common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.
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Ascribed status is
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Status one is born with and inherits
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Achieved status is
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Status based on an individual's own personal characteristics that is earned by ones' actions
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Which of the following is not a probable adaptive advantage of bipedalism?
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It increased hominins' ability to brachiate through trees and thus escape from predators.
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What is the name given to the cultural period in which the first signs of domestication are present?
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Neolithic
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How does domestication affect the reproduction of plants?
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Domesticated plants lack natural seed dispersal mechanisms.
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Compared to the Middle East, when did food production emerge in the New World?
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At approximately the same time
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Compared to their wild counterparts, domesticated animals tend to be
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smaller
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Cuneiform is the name for early writing in what region of the world?
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Mesopotamia
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How are ranked societies different from states?
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States have social classes.
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What does the current debate about Neanderthals' relation to anatomically modern humans (AMHs) focus on?
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Whether Neanderthals were ancestral to AMHs in Europe
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The footprints at Laetoli are associated with which bipedal human ancestor?
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A. afarensis
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In contrast to earlier models, current explanations of the origin and decline of states
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consider the effects of social and political variables in addition to environmental factors.
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Knowledge of the properties of metals, including how to extract, process, and use them to make tools, is known as
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metallurgy
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Linguistic displacement is
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the ability to talk about things that are not present.
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Linguists believe that
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the world's linguistic diversity has been cut in half over the past 500 years.
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Regular shifting between "high" and "low" variants of a language is known as
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Diglossia
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The first animals to be domesticated in the Middle East (between 10,000 and 7500 B.P.) were
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goats and sheep
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The study of communication through body movements, stances, gestures, and expressions is called:
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Kinesics
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How are ranked societies different from states?
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States have social classes.
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The study of the forms in which sounds combine to form words and their meaningful parts is known as
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Morphology
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What allows a state to expand its territory much larger than a chiefdom?
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Bureaucracy
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What do proponents of the hydraulic theory for the origin of the state argue?
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States were the by-products of the organizational requirements of large irrigation systems.
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What do sociolinguists study?
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Speech in its social context
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What does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis argue?
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The languages people speak influence the way they think.
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What genetic difference has been found between humans and chimpanzees that is likely responsible for the human capability for speech?
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A mutation in the FOXP2 gene
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What happened at about the same time as the beginning of the Zapotec state in the Valley of Oaxaca?
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Raiding increased to warfare for territory
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What is a vertical economy?
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A system that exploits closely spaced environmental zones that contrast with one another in altitude, rainfall, overall climate, and vegetation
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What is the name of the wild ancestor of maize?
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Teosinte
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What is the term for the area between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is today Iraq and southwestern Iran?
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Mesopotamia
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What was the first hominin to arrive in the New World?
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H. sapiens sapiens
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Who were the Natufians?
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Broad-spectrum foragers who lived in year-round villages in the Middle East
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Why was animal domestication less important in the New World than it was in the Old World?
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The large-game animals that were hunted during earlier periods either had gone extinct or were not domesticable.
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Linguistic productivity is
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Refers to using the rules of language to produce new expressions
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Which statement about nonhuman primate calls is not true?
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Calls demonstrate linguistic productivity.
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Which of the following statements best describes the use of language by apes?
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Apes can learn American Sign Language and have shown the capacity for cultural transmission, productivity, and displacement, although there is still a gap between human and other ape language capabilities.
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Which of the following is an archaeological marker of ascribed status?
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Wealthy burials of young children
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What term refers to the minimal sound contrasts that distinguish meaning in a language?
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Phonemes
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What term refers to a society that lacks status distinctions except those based on age, gender, and individual qualities, talents, and achievements?
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Egalitarian
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How were Oldowan tools manufactured?
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By chipping flakes off a core
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Which of the following statements best summarizes the relationship between the birth canal and brain size during the course of hominin evolution?
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Natural selection has struck a balance between the structural demands of upright posture in bipedalism, which limits the expansion of the pelvic opening, and the tendency toward increased brain size.
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What was the major hominin group that lived from about 4 million to 1 million years ago?
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Australopithecus
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Which of the following statements concerning the Australopithecines is not true?
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They started out as knuckle-walkers (A. anamensis) and ended up bipedal (A. boisei).
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Which of the following is not a trend in early hominin evolution?
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Decreasing cranial capacity
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The spread of H. erectus from tropical into subtropical and temperate environments was facilitated by all of the following except
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Upper Paleolithic toolmaking traditions.
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Which of the following is a trend in hominin evolution since the genus Homo began?
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Molar size has decreased.
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Evidence from the South American site of Monte Verde suggests that the Americas may have first been settled
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around 18,000 years ago.
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What hominin species is associated with the broad-spectrum revolution?
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H. sapiens sapiens
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Which of the following is not a characteristic of states?
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They lack hereditary inequality.
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What term refers to the arrangement and order of words in phrases and sentences?
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Syntax
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What term refers to languages that have descended from the same ancestral language?
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Daughter languages
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For most of human history, people lived in societies characterized by what kind of sociopolitical organization?
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Band
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Horticulture makes intensive use of
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none of the factors of production
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How do chiefdoms differ from states?
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Chiefdoms lack socioeconomic stratification and stratum endogamy.
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What term do social scientists use to refer to the socially approved use of power?
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Authority
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What term refers to the type of pastoral economy in which the entire group moves with the animals throughout the year?
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Nomadism
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Which of the following is a characteristic of most foraging societies?
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egalitarianism
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Which of the following is not one of the adaptive strategies included in Cohen's typology?
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Redistribution
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Which of the following statements about agriculturalists is true?
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They use their land intensively and continuously.
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Which of the following statements about nonstate societies is true?
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Economic, political, and religious activities are often interrelated.
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The deliberate physical extinction of a group is known as
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genocide
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What does Kottak say is the greatest obstacle to slowing climate change?
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Meeting energy needs
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What is the term for identification with, and feeling part of, a cultural group, and exclusion from other cultural groups?
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Ethnicity
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What is the term for ethnic groups that once had, or wish to have or regain, autonomous political status?
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Nationalities
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What is the term for our contemporary world in flux, with people on the move, in which established canons, categories, distinctions, and boundaries are breaking down?
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Postmodernity
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What is the term for policies and practices that harm a group and its members?
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Discrimination
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What term does Barth use to refer to a society that combines ethnic contrasts, ecological specialization, and economic interdependence of groups?
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Plural society
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What term refers to the destruction of an ethnic group's culture?
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Ethnocide
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What term refers to the view that cultural diversity in a country is something good and desirable?
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Multiculturalism
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Which is the term that many scientists prefer instead of global warming to describe changes in the environment?
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Climate change
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Which of the following statements about social race is true?
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Social races are groups assumed to have a biological basis but actually are defined in a culturally arbitrary manner.
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What kind of social unit is common among foragers?
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Band
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Agricultural intensification is not associated with
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greater ecological diversity.
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Means of production include
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land, labor, and technology.
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What is a mode of production?
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The way production is organized in a society
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The term alienation is used to describe what phenomenon in industrial economies?
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The separation of workers from the things they produce
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When an individual gives something to someone else but expects nothing in return, this is an example of
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generalized reciprocity.
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What is the primary difference between a village head and a "big man"?
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A big man has supporters in multiple villages.
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Which of the following statements concerning the Basseri and the Qashqai is true?
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The Qashqai authority structure was more complex and hierarchical than that of the Basseri.
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When a dominant group compels a minority group to adopt the dominant culture, this is known as
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forced assimilation.
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Which of the following is a major difference between Brazilian and American racial classifications?
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In the United States, social race is determined at birth and does not change, but in Brazil, racial identity can change from day to day.
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What rule automatically places the children of a union between members of different groups in the minority group?
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Hypodescent
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"Race" is
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culturally constructed.
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What is the term for our contemporary world in flux, with people on the move, in which established canons, categories, distinctions, and boundaries are breaking down?
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Postmodernity
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What term refers to the rapid spread or advance of one culture at the expense of others, or its imposition on other cultures?
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Cultural imperialism
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What is the area of anthropology that focuses on how cultural beliefs and practices helped human populations adapt to their environments?
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Ecological anthropology
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Which of the following does not describe indigenous identities?
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They are fixed.
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What does it mean for people to live multilocally?
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Migrants maintain ties with their native lands through phoning, e-mailing, visiting, sending money, and watching ethnic TV.
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Which of the following is a characteristic shared by most present-day foragers?
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They live in marginal environments.
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Which of the following is associated with horticultural systems of cultivation?
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Slash-and-burn techniques
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Transhumance is a form of
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pastoralism
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Which of the following statements about agriculturalists is true?
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They use their land intensively and continuously.
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Which of the following is found in all human societies?
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Gender-based division of labor
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In what sense are nonindustrial economies embedded in society?
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Relations of production, distribution, and consumption are social relations with economic aspects.
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In which kind of society is it most likely that leaders will acquire their positions as a result of their personal backgrounds or abilities, rather than heredity?
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Tribal society
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Which of the following statements about leaders in foraging bands is true?
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They have no means of forcing people to follow their decisions.
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What kind of exchange principle was prominent in Polynesian chiefdoms?
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Redistribution
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According to Weber, what is the basis of social status?
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Prestige
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The Holocaust is one example of
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genocide.
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People may occupy many different social statuses during their lives, or even during the course of a day. What term refers to a person's ability to emphasize different identities in different social contexts?
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Situational negotiation of identity
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What is the natural phenomenon that keeps the Earth's surface warm?
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Atmosphere
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A political system ruled by men in which women have inferior status is known as a(an)
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patriarchy
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According to Tylor, what is the sequence through which religion evolved?
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Animism, polytheism, monotheism
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According to Tylor, what kind of religion is based on the idea that a person's body is inhabited by two entities—one that is active during the day and another (a double or soul) that is active during sleep and trances?
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Animism
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Among foragers
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the lack of a clear public-domestic dichotomy contributes to reduced gender inequality.
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Cargo cults are
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a type of revitalization movement in response to new contact with industrial societies.
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Cross-cultural studies indicate that
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in most societies women tend to be the primary child caregivers.
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In general, societies with the patrilineal-patrilocal complex are characterized by all of the following except
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inheritance of land and prestige through female lines.
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In general, the status of women
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is higher in matrilineal societies than it is in patrilineal societies.
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More than half of American households with incomes below the poverty line
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are headed by women
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Polytheism refers to
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belief in multiple gods.
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Rites of passage usually consist of what phases?
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Separation, liminality, and incorporation
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The use of voodoo dolls is an example of
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imitative magic
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What did Handsome Lake initiate among the Iroquois at the beginning of the 19th century?
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a revitalization movement
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What frequently occurs during the liminal phase of a rite of passage?
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Reversals of ordinary behavior
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What have recent cross-cultural studies of gender roles demonstrated?
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The relative status of women is variable, depending on factors such as subsistence strategy, the importance of warfare, and the prevalence of a domestic-public dichotomy.
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What is communitas?
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A feeling of great social solidarity, equality, and togetherness
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What is polygyny?
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A situation in which a man has more than one wife at the same time
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What is the domestic-public dichotomy?
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Strong differentiation between the home and the outside world
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What is the name of the postmarital residence pattern in which a married couple is expected to live in the husband's community?
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Patrilocality
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What term is used to refer to a nonhuman apical ancestor of a clan?
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Totem
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What term refers to a unilineal descent group whose members claim, but cannot demonstrate, common descent from an apical ancestor?
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Clan
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What term refers to the manipulation of the supernatural to accomplish specific goals?
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Magic
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What term refers to the practice of marrying a person outside of the group to which one belongs?
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Exogamy
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What term refers to the tasks and activities that a culture assigns to the sexes?
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Gender roles
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Which of the following is one of the main differences between descent groups and nuclear families?
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Descent groups are permanent, while nuclear families are not.
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Which of the following kinds of religion involves full-time religious specialists?
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Olympian religion
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Which of the following statements about Etoro conceptions of heterosexual intercourse is not true?
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It was permitted to take place only in a couple's residence.
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Which of the following statements about divorce is not true?
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Divorce is unique to industrialized nation-states.
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Which of the following statements about polyandry is true?
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It is a cultural adaptation to mobility associated with male travel for trade, commerce, and warfare.
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Which of the following statements about religions is not true?
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Religion serves only to maintain social solidarity; it does not create or maintain social divisions.
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Which of the following statements about sexual orientation is not true?
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Sexual orientation is genetically predetermined, and culture plays no role in its expression.
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Which of the following statements about the incest taboo is true?
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The incest taboo does not eliminate incest.
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Kottak argues that the relatively high incidence of expanded family households among poorer North Americans is
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an adaptation to poverty.
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Which of the following is true regarding the lifestyle of pre-contact !Kung?
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The "world was their garden." When food was scarce or disease came, they simply moved and left behind "bad" areas.
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Which of the following is true regarding the lifestyle of post-contact !Kung?
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Food was very limited. Mealy-meal was the food most consumed, and there was very little sharing between individuals of any resource.
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Which of the following is true regarding humans and conservation?
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There is no such thing as the "noble savage." Conservationism is at odds with the basic mindset of most humans, including hunter-gatherers.
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What are the two basic social units typically found in foraging societies?
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Nuclear family and band
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What is the name of the family in which a child is raised?
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Family of orientation
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The incest taboo is a cultural universal, but
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not all cultures define incest the same way.
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What term refers to a gift made by the husband and his kin to the bride and her kin?
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Bridewealth
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In general, what happens as the value of bridewealth increases?
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Marriages become more stable.
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The term intersex describes
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a discrepancy between external and internal genitals
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Which of the following is not culturally constructed?
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Sex
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In general, societies with the patrilineal-patrilocal complex are characterized by all of the following except
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inheritance of land and prestige through female lines.
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Cross-cultural studies indicate that
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in most societies women tend to be the primary child caregivers.
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The fact that chimpanzees and other nonhuman primates engage in masturbation and same-sex sexual activity suggests that
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flexibility in sexual expression is part of humans' primate heritage.
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What kind of magic is based on the belief that whatever is done to an object will affect a person who once had contact with it?
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Contagious magic
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Witchcraft accusations are often aimed at
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socially marginal people.
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What term refers to a custom or social action that operates to reduce status differences and bring standouts in line with community norms?
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Leveling mechanism
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Sequences of words and actions that are used during rituals are known as
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liturgical orders.
