Social and Cultural Anthropology

Alliance (Anthropology)

The term ‘alliance’ as it is used in anthropology refers to those social relations created by marriage. The word derives from the French, where it can be used to describe marriage, or the fact of being in an ‘in-law’ relation. The reason why a term derived from French is often used in anglophone anthropology, frequently […]

American anthropology

American (or rather United States) anthropology is a vast professional and disciplinary undertaking. It is taught in many high schools and most colleges and universities. Some ninety universities grant around 400 doctoral degrees in anthropology annually. Applied anthropologists outnumber academic anthropologists and hundreds of persons with doctorates in anthropology practise other professions such as law, […]

Americas: Central (Anthropology)

As Table 1 shows, Central America consists of one very large country, Mexico, with some 75 per cent of the total land area and nearly 80 per cent of the total population; and six much smaller countries, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, which form a long and mostly narrow strip of […]

Americas: Latin America (Anthropology)

The term ‘Latin America’ is ambiguous, as its connotations are various. As a more encompassing notion, it refers to a territory, and its concomitant nation states, stretching from Mexico in the north, through the Caribbean and Central America, to Argentina and Chile in the south. However, as a much looser term, Latin America evokes a […]

Americas: Native North America (Anthropology)

The Native people of North America comprise an immense diversity of societies adapted to the full variety of terrestrial environments. From the tundra and coniferous forests of the far north to the swamplands and deserts of the south these societies have in many cases sustained a distinctive lifestyle and identity despite the fact that their […]

Americas: Native South America (Highland) (Anthropology)

Andean anthropology has an enduring fascination with Inka "ethnohistory and the desire to identify the distinctively ‘Andean’ in a region that has been in constant and intensive contact with the West for over 500 years. Indeed one of the fascinating features of the social and cultural practices of this region is the way in which […]

Americas: Native South America (Lowland) (Anthropology)

The designation ‘lowland peoples’ of South America refers, in the main, to indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin and Circum-Caribbean (Brazil, Peru, Colombia, Bolivia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana) and is largely an artefact of Julian Steward’s ‘Handbook of South American Indians’ (1946—50). According to Steward, tropical forest (lowland) peoples represent societies which, […]

Ancestors (Anthropology)

The term ‘ancestor’ is used in anthropology to designate those forebears who are remembered, and to denote specific religious practices as a part of such phrases as ‘ancestor cult’ or ‘ancestor worship’. Which forebears and in what way they are remembered varies from kinship system to kinship system. Some Amerindians, for example, seem quite uninterested […]

Anthropological societies

The formation of anthropology as a subject of intellectual study was closely associated with the establishment of distinctive institutions. In the early days these tended to be learned societies which reflected anthropology’s amateur origins. As the subject developed academic pretensions, these learned societies were transformed into more professional groupings and new, often more specialized institutions […]

Archaeology (Anthropology)

Archaeology may be broadly defined as the investigation of human cultures and societies of the past through recovery and interpretation of both remnants of ancient material culture and, most critically, the physical contexts in which they have been preserved. The range of time subject to archaeological investigation runs from the very recent historical past, when […]

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