Questions and Answers of Biological Anthropology

What is the difference between legitimate and illegitimate political power? Give an example of each.
Review Geertz’s definition of religion. What do you think are the strengths and/or weaknesses of his definition?
What are the benefits and limitations of conducting cross-cultural research?
What can we learn from studying hunter-gatherer societies that might help us understand and interpret life in industrial societies today?
How can the study of contemporary foragers provide us with an understanding of Paleolithic lifestyles?
What types of economic exchange would you expect to find in hunter-gatherer societies? Are the individuals in foraging societies more altruistic, magnanimous, and generous, or are they no more nobler
Is private ownership of land a universal concept that applies to all societies? How much variation in “ownership” is found among forager groups?
Evaluate the hypothesis that in societies in which female contributions to the food supply are less critical or less valued than male contributions, female status is lower.
Would you rather be involved in warfare as a member of a forager society or as a member of an industrial nation? Why?
How are forager religions different from your own? Are there any similarities?
What are some of the demographic differences one finds between foragers and food producers such as pastoralists and horticulturalists? Why do you think these differences exist?
Discuss the concept of property ownership in tribal societies. How does it differ from what generally occurs in band societies?
What is a descent group? What forms do descent groups take? What are some of their functions?
Discuss the functions of a descent group in managing the economic rights and obligations of a tribal society. Use specific examples to illustrate your points.
Why do you think a society would have marriage rules such as the levirate and sororate?
What are some of the explanations given for the fact that anthropologists have not found any truly matriarchal societies in the archaeological, historical, or ethnographic records?
What forms of political organization are found in tribal societies? What are some of the reasons that have been offered to explain these types of political organization? How do these types of
How are descent groups associated with tribal religious practices?
How and why did chiefdoms come into existence? That is, how did economic inequality and social stratification arise from egalitarian foraging and tribal societies? However, in some cases, chiefdoms
Aside from the prestige factors associated with the potlatch among the Northwest Coast Indians, what other functions did these ceremonies have, and what were the implications?
What role did kinship and descent play in the social structure of a chiefdom?
What was the role of trade and exchange in chiefdom societies? Give some specific examples of how goods were acquired and transferred from one individual to another.
How and why did the practices of reciprocity and redistribution in chiefdoms differ from the way they functioned in bands and tribes? What factors affected the way exchanges took place?
Describe the social structure of a chiefdom. What were the specific social rankings, and how were they determined?
How do agricultural states differ demographically from small-scale societies such as bands, tribes, and chiefdoms?
Discuss some of the technological innovations developed in agricultural states.
How do segmentary states and theater states differ from the Aztec, Roman, and Chinese empires?
How do property rights in agricultural states differ from those in forager and tribal societies?
What are some of the advantages of having an extended family organization in an agricultural state, as opposed to an autonomous nuclear family?
Are marriage patterns and social ties in agricultural states independent of economic and political considerations? If so, why? If not, what are some of the economic and political implications of
Discuss the relationships among gender, subsistence, and status in agricultural states. How does the picture that emerges differ from the one for any of the following groups: (1) foragers, (2)
According to Morton Fried, codified laws reinforce a system of inequity by keeping peasants subordinate, while allowing those in power to have access to scarce resources. Elman Service provides a
How does religion interact with state power and bureaucratic authority in agricultural civilizations? Give examples of the relationship between the state and religion in these agricultural societies.
What are some of the basic reasons for the collapse of agricultural states?

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