Anthropology is the holistic, scientific study of humanity, examining human biology, evolutionary history, societal structures, and cultural variations across time and space. Traditionally divided into four major subfields cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, archaeology, and linguistic anthropology it bridges the natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities. By investigating everything from ancient fossil hominins to modern globalized urban cultures, anthropology provides deep insights into human adaptability and social organization. Mastering anthropological concepts is essential for academic examinations in social sciences, international relations, cultural heritage management, and public policy.
1. Who is widely considered the father of modern American anthropology and established the four-field approach?
Correct Answer: b) Franz Boas
Explanation:
Franz Boas established the four-field approach in American anthropology, emphasizing cultural relativism and historical particularism.
2. What does the term 'ethnography' refer to in anthropological research?
Correct Answer: b) The detailed description of a culture based on firsthand fieldwork
Explanation:
Ethnography is both the process of prolonged fieldwork participant observation and the resulting written account of a specific culture.
3. Which anthropological concept asserts that all cultural systems are inherently equal in value and that customs should be understood within their own cultural context?
Correct Answer: b) Cultural Relativism
Explanation:
Cultural relativism is the methodological practice of suspending personal cultural biases to understand beliefs and practices on their own terms.
4. What is the primary focus of biological (physical) anthropology?
Correct Answer: a) The evolution, anatomy, genetics, and primate behavior of humans and their ancestors
Explanation:
Biological anthropology studies humans as biological organisms, incorporating paleoanthropology, primatology, and human population genetics.
5. Which fossil discovery of Australopithecus afarensis provided crucial evidence of early bipedalism dating back over 3 million years?
Correct Answer: b) Lucy
Explanation:
Discovered in Ethiopia by Donald Johanson and team, 'Lucy' (Australopithecus afarensis) demonstrated clear anatomical adaptations for bipedal walking.
6. What term describes the judging of other cultures solely by the standards and values of one's own culture?
Correct Answer: b) Ethnocentrism
Explanation:
Ethnocentrism is the universal human tendency to view one's own group or culture as superior and central, applying its values to judge outsiders.
7. Who is credited with inventing participant observation and revolutionizing fieldwork through long-term residence in the Trobriand Islands?
Correct Answer: b) Bronislaw Malinowski
Explanation:
Bronislaw Malinowski established the gold standard of ethnographic fieldwork via long-term immersion, language learning, and participant observation.
8. What does the 'holistic perspective' in anthropology entail?
Correct Answer: b) Examining all facets of human experience—past and present, biology, language, culture, and society—as an integrated whole
Explanation:
Holism is anthropology's signature approach, insisting that biological, social, cultural, and historical aspects of humanity are interconnected.
9. Which subfield of anthropology studies past human cultures through the recovery, analysis, and interpretation of material remains?
Correct Answer: b) Archaeology
Explanation:
Archaeology reconstructs past human behavior and cultural patterns through material culture, ranging from stone tools to urban ruins.
10. What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in linguistic anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The structure and vocabulary of a language influence how its speakers perceive, think about, and experience the world.
Explanation:
Linguistic relativity (the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis) proposes that linguistic categories shape cognitive habits and worldviews.
11. What term refers to the lifelong process by which an individual learns and internalizes the culture, values, and norms of their society?
Correct Answer: b) Enculturation
Explanation:
Enculturation is the socialization process through which children and adults acquire the cultural traditions and behavioral codes of their group.
12. Which hominin species is widely recognized as the first to use controlled fire and migrate out of Africa into Eurasia?
Correct Answer: c) Homo erectus
Explanation:
Homo erectus exhibited modern human-like body proportions, sophisticated Acheulean stone tools, mastery of fire, and extensive geographic expansion.
13. Which anthropological theory, championed by Leslie White and Julian Steward, focuses on how human societies adapt to their natural environments through technological and economic means?
Correct Answer: b) Cultural Ecology
Explanation:
Cultural ecology studies the dynamic relationship between human populations and their environments, highlighting adaptive strategies.
14. What is the primary focus of structuralism in anthropology, pioneered by Claude Lévi-Strauss?
Correct Answer: b) Uncovering universal deep cognitive structures and binary oppositions underlying human myth, kinship, and culture
Explanation:
Lévi-Strauss argued that human minds organize the world through universal binary mental structures, expressed in myths and kinship systems.
15. Which archaeological dating method measures the radioactive decay of carbon-14 in organic remains up to approximately 50,000 years old?
Correct Answer: b) Radiocarbon (C-14) dating
Explanation:
Radiocarbon dating calculates the age of organic artifacts (bone, wood, charcoal) by measuring remaining radioactive carbon isotopes.
16. What type of kinship descent system traces lineage exclusively through female ancestors from mother to daughter?
Correct Answer: b) Matrilineal
Explanation:
In a matrilineal descent system, family membership, inheritance, and group affiliation are passed down through the maternal line.
17. What rule of marriage requires individuals to marry outside of their own specific social group, clan, or lineage?
Correct Answer: b) Exogamy
Explanation:
Exogamy mandates marriage outside one's designated social group, preventing inbreeding and cementing political or economic alliances.
18. What is the term for a marriage system in which one man has multiple wives simultaneously?
Correct Answer: b) Polygyny
Explanation:
Polygyny is the most common form of polygamy globally, where a husband maintains multiple simultaneous wives.
19. Which evolutionary hypothesis argues that modern Homo sapiens evolved concurrently in multiple regions of the Old World from local archaic populations?
Correct Answer: b) Multiregional Evolution Hypothesis
Explanation:
The multiregional model posits gene flow across populations preventing speciation while modern humans emerged across Africa, Asia, and Europe.
20. What is 'applied anthropology'?
Correct Answer: b) The use of anthropological data, methods, and theories to identify and solve practical, real-world human problems
Explanation:
Applied anthropology puts anthropological perspectives to work in medicine, development, public policy, and cultural resource management.
21. Which British anthropologist developed structural functionalism, arguing that cultural institutions function to satisfy the biological and psychological needs of individuals?
Correct Answer: b) Bronislaw Malinowski
Explanation:
Malinowski's psychological functionalism held that cultural institutions exist to meet fundamental human biological and psychological needs.
22. What term describes the exchange of cultural features resulting from continuous firsthand contact between two distinct cultural groups?
Correct Answer: b) Acculturation
Explanation:
Acculturation refers to sweeping cultural changes that occur when different cultural groups interact closely over extended periods.
23. What is the term for a religious practitioner who is believed to have direct, personal contact with the supernatural spirit world, often entering trances to cure illness?
Correct Answer: b) Shaman
Explanation:
Shamans are part-time religious specialists who utilize altered states of consciousness to communicate with spirits for healing and divination.
24. Which non-human primates are studied extensively by biological anthropologists to model early hominin social behavior and bipedal origins?
Correct Answer: c) Living hominoids (chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and orangutans)
Explanation:
Primatology focuses heavily on great apes due to our close genetic and behavioral relationship, shedding light on human evolutionary roots.
25. What economic exchange system involves the giving of valuables without explicit expectation of immediate return, common among close kin and foraging bands?
Correct Answer: b) Generalized reciprocity
Explanation:
Generalized reciprocity entails sharing goods and services without keeping strict accounts or demanding immediate repayment, fostering solidarity.
26. What is the Kula ring studied by Bronislaw Malinowski in the Trobriand Islands an example of?
Correct Answer: b) A complex ceremonial exchange network establishing political alliances and prestige
Explanation:
The Kula ring involved ceremonial exchange of shell necklaces and armbands across islands, cementing inter-island ties and social status.
27. Which unilinear cultural evolutionist wrote 'Primitive Culture' (1871) and proposed a progression from animism to polytheism to monotheism?
Correct Answer: b) Edward Burnett Tylor
Explanation:
E.B. Tylor proposed an evolutionary sequence of religion starting with animism, advancing through polytheism, and culminating in monotheism.
28. What type of political organization is typically characterized by a small, mobile foraging group of related individuals with egalitarian leadership?
Correct Answer: b) Band
Explanation:
Bands are small-scale, egalitarian societies of hunter-gatherers lacking formal centralized governance or institutionalized stratification.
29. What distinguishes a 'chiefdom' from a 'tribe' in anthropological political typologies?
Correct Answer: b) Chiefdoms feature centralized, institutionalized leadership with hereditary offices and social ranking, whereas tribes are largely egalitarian with decentralized leadership.
Explanation:
Chiefdoms introduce formal hereditary social ranking and centralized economic redistribution led by a chief, superseding tribal egalitarianism.
30. What is 'ethnoarchaeology'?
Correct Answer: b) The ethnographic study of contemporary peoples to understand how material culture is used and discarded, aiding archaeological interpretation
Explanation:
Ethnoarchaeologists observe living societies to build analogies and models explaining how human behavior translates into the archaeological record.
31. What term describes the smallest meaningful units of sound in a language that can distinguish meaning?
Correct Answer: b) Phoneme
Explanation:
A phoneme is the smallest contrastive unit of sound in a language system (e.g., /p/ vs. /b/ in English).
32. What are 'morphemes' in linguistic anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The smallest indivisible units of meaning or grammatical function in a language
Explanation:
Morphemes comprise roots, prefixes, and suffixes that carry semantic meaning or grammatical purpose.
33. Which theoretical approach in cultural anthropology focuses on symbols, meaning, and viewing culture as a text to be interpreted, championed by Clifford Geertz?
Correct Answer: b) Interpretive (Symbolic) Anthropology
Explanation:
Clifford Geertz argued that culture is a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms through which humans communicate and develop knowledge.
34. What is 'cultural materialism', the research strategy developed by Marvin Harris?
Correct Answer: b) A theory stating that infrastructural conditions—technological, economic, and demographic adaptations—shape social structure and superstructure
Explanation:
Cultural materialism prioritizes material, techno-environmental, and economic factors in explaining cultural similarities and differences.
35. What term refers to a social system where inheritance and royal succession pass through the maternal uncle to his sister's son?
Correct Answer: b) Avunculocal residence and descent
Explanation:
Avunculocal systems involve a newly married couple living with or near the groom's mother's brother, common in certain matrilineal societies.
36. What is the 'Out of Africa' (Replacement) model for modern human origins?
Correct Answer: b) Modern Homo sapiens evolved in Africa around 200,000 to 300,000 years ago and subsequently migrated globally, replacing archaic human species without significant interbreeding.
Explanation:
The Out of Africa model posits a single African origin for anatomically modern humans, though recent paleogenomics shows minor interbreeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans.
37. What does 'paleopathology' study?
Correct Answer: b) Diseases, injuries, and nutritional deficiencies evident in human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts
Explanation:
Paleopathology examines bones and teeth for evidence of trauma, infection, congenital abnormalities, and metabolic stress in past populations.
38. What is 'stratigraphy' in archaeology?
Correct Answer: b) The study of superimposed soil and rock layers (strata) to establish relative chronological sequences
Explanation:
The law of superposition dictates that lower strata are older than upper strata, providing relative dating for archaeological finds.
39. Which hominin species is famously associated with intentional burials, symbolic grave goods, and robust adaptations to Ice Age Europe?
Correct Answer: b) Homo neanderthalensis
Explanation:
Neanderthals inhabited Eurasia, possessing robust frames, cold-adapted features, Mousterian tools, and evidence of complex cultural behaviors like burial.
40. What is the term for the cross-cultural study of human bodily gestures, facial expressions, and posture in communication?
Correct Answer: b) Kinesics
Explanation:
Kinesics is the anthropological and linguistic study of body language, gestures, and non-verbal communicative movements.
41. What does 'proxemics' examine in cultural anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The cultural use of space, distance, and territoriality in human interaction
Explanation:
Pioneered by Edward T. Hall, proxemics analyzes how different cultures perceive and utilize personal and social spatial distances.
42. What is a 'totem' in anthropological studies of religion and kinship?
Correct Answer: b) An animal, plant, or natural object used as a sacred emblem symbolizing a clan or lineage
Explanation:
Totemism involves a mystical relationship between a social group and a natural entity acting as their sacred emblem and ancestor.
43. Which anthropologist conducted famous research on adolescent sexuality and Samoa, highlighting cultural conditioning over biological determinism?
Correct Answer: b) Margaret Mead
Explanation:
Margaret Mead's 'Coming of Age in Samoa' argued that adolescent turmoil is culturally constructed rather than a universal biological inevitability.
44. What is the primary characteristic of a 'pastoralist' subsistence strategy?
Correct Answer: b) Herding domesticated livestock as the primary source of food and livelihood
Explanation:
Pastoralism centers on the domestication and herding of herd animals such as cattle, sheep, goats, or camels across arid or grassland biomes.
45. What does 'horticulture' refer to in subsistence anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) Small-scale, non-industrial crop cultivation using hand tools without irrigation or crop rotation
Explanation:
Horticulture employs human labor and hand tools (hoes, digging sticks) in shifting garden plots, relying on rainfall rather than artificial irrigation.
46. What is the difference between 'emic' and 'etic' perspectives in anthropological research?
Correct Answer: b) Emic is the insider's native perspective and categorization; etic is the outsider analyst's external framework and scientific categories.
Explanation:
Coined by linguistic analogy, emic perspectives capture local insider categories, whereas etic perspectives use cross-cultural scientific frameworks.
47. What term describes a rule prohibiting sexual relations and marriage between close relatives, such as siblings or parents and children?
Correct Answer: b) Incest taboo
Explanation:
The incest taboo is a near-universal cultural prohibition against sexual intercourse and marriage between specified close relatives.
48. What is 'levirate' marriage customs?
Correct Answer: a) A widow marrying her deceased husband's brother
Explanation:
Levirate ensures the widow's economic security and keeps her children and property within the deceased husband's lineage clan.
49. What is 'sororate' marriage customs?
Correct Answer: b) A widower marrying his deceased wife's sister
Explanation:
The sororate provides a replacement wife from the same family if a wife dies childless or prematurely, maintaining lineage alliances.
50. What economic transfer involves goods given by the groom's family to the bride's family upon marriage?
Correct Answer: b) Bride wealth (bridewealth / lobola)
Explanation:
Bridewealth is a customary transfer of valuable goods or livestock from the groom's lineage to the bride's family, compensating for the loss of her labor and reproductive capacity.
51. What economic transfer involves property or money brought by a bride to her husband upon marriage?
Correct Answer: b) Dowry
Explanation:
A dowry consists of goods or money transferred from the bride's family to the newly established household or groom, common in stratified agrarian states.
52. Which hominin tool industry is characterized by large, bifacial hand axes and cleavers associated with Homo erectus?
Correct Answer: b) Acheulean industry
Explanation:
The Acheulean tool industry features symmetrical, teardrop-shaped hand axes crafted via bifacial percussion flaking.
53. What is the earliest known stone tool industry, dating back roughly 2.6 million years and associated with Homo habilis?
Correct Answer: b) Oldowan
Explanation:
Oldowan tools consist of simple core choppers and sharp stone flakes used for scavenging and butchery by early hominins.
54. What is 'palynology' in archaeological science?
Correct Answer: b) The analysis of fossilized pollen grains and spores to reconstruct past vegetation and climates
Explanation:
Palynology helps archaeologists reconstruct past environmental changes, diets, and climatic shifts by analyzing durable fossil pollen.
55. What does 'faunal analysis' (zooarchaeology) study?
Correct Answer: b) Animal remains recovered from archaeological sites to understand past human diets, hunting strategies, and environments
Explanation:
Zooarchaeology studies animal bones, teeth, and shells to reconstruct human subsistence economies and human-animal relationships.
56. What is 'coprolite' analysis in archaeology?
Correct Answer: b) Studying fossilized human feces to directly reconstruct prehistoric diets and parasite loads
Explanation:
Coprolites provide direct microscopic and chemical evidence of what ancient humans ate, seasonal foraging, and gut parasites.
57. Which concept in medical anthropology distinguishes between a disease (biomedical pathology) and an illness (the patient's subjective experience)?
Correct Answer: b) Disease versus Illness
Explanation:
In medical anthropology, 'disease' refers to objective biological dysfunction, while 'illness' encompasses the culturally shaped subjective experience of sickness.
58. What is 'structural violence' in medical and political anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) Social arrangements and systemic inequalities—such as poverty, racism, and classism—that systematically harm individuals by preventing them from meeting basic needs
Explanation:
Termed by Johan Galtung and expanded by Paul Farmer, structural violence refers to how systemic social structures cause preventable suffering.
59. What is 'globalization' from a contemporary sociocultural anthropology perspective?
Correct Answer: b) The intensification of worldwide interconnectedness, involving the flow of ideas, capital, commodities, and people across national borders, producing complex local adaptations
Explanation:
Anthropologists study globalization as a multidimensional flow that creates hybridization rather than simple cultural homogenization.
60. What is 'reflexivity' in modern ethnographic fieldwork?
Correct Answer: b) The anthropologist's critical awareness of how their own position, identity, biases, and presence affect the research process and ethnographic writing
Explanation:
Reflexivity requires ethnographers to examine their own role and power dynamics in shaping the ethnographic data they produce.
61. Which early anthropologist argued that the human mind shares universal psychological patterns across all races, rejecting racist theories of biological hierarchy?
Correct Answer: b) Franz Boas
Explanation:
Franz Boas relentlessly combated scientific racism, demonstrating that biological race, language, and culture are independent variables.
62. What does 'pedestrian survey' involve in archaeological fieldwork?
Correct Answer: b) Systematically walking across a landscape in teams to locate surface artifacts, features, and archaeological sites
Explanation:
Pedestrian survey is a non-destructive reconnaissance method used to map regional settlement patterns and locate surface archaeological sites.
63. What is 'remote sensing' in modern archaeology?
Correct Answer: b) Using non-invasive technologies like LiDAR, ground-penetrating radar (GPR), and aerial photography to detect buried structures and landscape features
Explanation:
Remote sensing allows archaeologists to map subterranean features, ancient roads, and dense forest canopies without digging.
64. What is 'potlatch' among Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast studied by anthropologists?
Correct Answer: b) A grand ceremonial feast involving vast redistribution and destruction of wealth to establish social rank, prestige, and alliances
Explanation:
The potlatch is a pivotal redistributive institution where chiefs validate social status by giving away or destroying immense quantities of wealth.
65. What is 'animism', as defined by E.B. Tylor in the anthropology of religion?
Correct Answer: b) The belief in spiritual beings or souls inhabiting animals, plants, rocks, and natural phenomena
Explanation:
Tylor defined animism as the foundational belief that non-human entities possess a spiritual essence or soul.
66. What is 'animatism', distinguished from animism by Robert Marett?
Correct Answer: b) Belief in an impersonal, supernatural power or force (like mana) pervading the universe
Explanation:
Animatism refers to belief in an impersonal spiritual force (such as Melanesian 'mana') rather than personalized individual spirits.
67. What is a 'rite of passage', a concept coined by Arnold van Gennep?
Correct Answer: b) A ritual marking a person's transition from one status to another (e.g., birth, puberty, marriage, death), consisting of separation, liminality, and incorporation
Explanation:
Rites of passage guide individuals through three universal phases: separation from old status, liminal transition, and incorporation into new status.
68. What is 'liminality' during a rite of passage?
Correct Answer: b) The ambiguous transitional phase where initiates are stripped of their previous status and stand 'betwixt and between'
Explanation:
Liminality is the betwixt-and-between phase characterized by humility, communitas, and suspension of normal social rules.
69. What does Victor Turner's concept of 'communitas' describe?
Correct Answer: b) An intense feeling of social solidarity, equality, and shared humanity experienced during the liminal phase of rituals
Explanation:
Communitas is the unlayered bond of solidarity that unites people passing through shared liminal transitions together.
70. What is 'syncretism' in cultural anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The blending or fusion of different religious beliefs, practices, or cultural traditions into a new, coherent synthesis
Explanation:
Religious and cultural syncretism frequently occurs during colonialism or migration, merging elements from different traditions (e.g., Santería or Vodou).
71. What is 'cargo cult' an example of in the anthropology of religion?
Correct Answer: b) A revitalization movement arising under colonial stress, anticipating the miraculous arrival of Western manufactured goods through ritual action
Explanation:
Cargo cults emerged in Melanesia during and after WWII as prophetic revitalization movements responding to vast inequalities of Western industrial goods.
72. What is a 'revitalization movement', defined by Anthony F.C. Wallace?
Correct Answer: b) A deliberate, organized, conscious effort by members of a society to construct a more satisfying culture during periods of severe stress or rapid social change
Explanation:
Revitalization movements (such as religious reform movements or anti-colonial uprisings) seek to revitalize a stressed society by reforming cultural values.
73. What is 'horticultural shifting cultivation' (slash-and-burn agriculture) ecologically designed to do?
Correct Answer: b) Clear forest plots, use ash to fertilize soil for temporary crop yields, and allow plots to lie fallow to regenerate secondary forest growth
Explanation:
Shash-and-burn horticulture is a sustainable adaptation when population density is low, relying on long fallow periods to restore soil fertility.
74. What is 'egalitarian society' defined as in anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) A society in which there is little or no differential access to basic resources, power, or prestige; everyone has roughly equal standing
Explanation:
Egalitarian societies (typical of foragers) have as many positions of valued status as there are persons capable of filling them.
75. What is a 'ranked society' in anthropological political classification?
Correct Answer: b) A society that has positions of valued prestige and social ranking, but lacks significant inequalities in access to basic economic resources or power
Explanation:
Ranked societies (such as many chiefdoms) limit positions of valued status (like chiefs), though material wealth remains relatively distributed.
76. What is a 'stratified society'?
Correct Answer: a) A society divided into hierarchical social strata with unequal access to wealth, power, and basic resources
Explanation:
Stratified societies (states and class/caste systems) feature permanent unequal access to wealth, prestige, and power across social strata.
77. What is 'bipedalism' in human evolution?
Correct Answer: b) Walking habitually on two hind limbs (feet), a hallmark defining trait of the hominin lineage
Explanation:
Habitual bipedalism appeared early in hominins (over 4 million years ago), preceding major brain expansion and tool manufacture.
78. What anatomical feature is a key indicator of bipedalism in fossil hominins?
Correct Answer: b) A forward-positioned foramen magnum at the base of the skull
Explanation:
The foramen magnum is positioned directly beneath the skull in bipeds to balance the head atop an upright spinal column, unlike quadrupeds.
79. What is 'sexual dimorphism' in physical anthropology and primatology?
Correct Answer: b) Differences in size, stature, and anatomical features between males and females of the same species
Explanation:
Sexual dimorphism reflects evolutionary pressures, often marked in primates by body size and canine dimorphism linked to mating systems.
80. What is 'gene flow' in population genetics and biological anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The transfer of genetic variation from one population to another through interbreeding and migration
Explanation:
Gene flow homogenizes populations by introducing new alleles when individuals migrate and reproduce across regional groups.
81. What is 'genetic drift'?
Correct Answer: b) Random fluctuations in allele frequencies from one generation to the next, often pronounced in small, isolated populations
Explanation:
Genetic drift is an evolutionary mechanism driven by chance events rather than natural selection, including the founder effect and bottleneck effect.
82. What is the 'founder effect' in population genetics?
Correct Answer: a) The establishment of a new population by a very small number of individuals, leading to reduced genetic diversity
Explanation:
The founder effect is a special case of genetic drift where a small colonizing subgroup carries only a fraction of the parent population's genetic variation.
83. What is 'C. Allen’s rule' regarding human biological adaptation to climate?
Correct Answer: b) Animals and humans adapted to cold climates tend to have shorter, stockier limbs and protrusions to minimize surface area heat loss, while those in warm climates have longer limbs.
Explanation:
Allen's rule predicts limb proportion variations based on ambient temperature to regulate body heat dissipation.
84. What is 'Bergmann’s rule' in human evolutionary biology?
Correct Answer: a) Body size tends to be greater in colder climates to conserve body heat, as larger bodies have a smaller surface-area-to-mass ratio.
Explanation:
Bergmann's rule states that populations in colder climates exhibit larger bulk and body mass to retain metabolic heat effectively.
85. What is 'balanced polymorphism' in human genetics, such as the sickle-cell trait and malaria resistance?
Correct Answer: b) A situation where selection maintains two or more alleles in a population because the heterozygote possesses a selective advantage over either homozygote
Explanation:
Balanced polymorphism occurs when heterozygous individuals (e.g., sickle-cell trait carriers) survive malaria better than normal or homozygous sickle-cell individuals.
86. Which early cultural anthropologist wrote 'Patterns of Culture' (1934), arguing that cultures are shaped by distinct psychological 'personalities writ large'?
Correct Answer: b) Ruth Benedict
Explanation:
Ruth Benedict argued that cultures select a limited set of cultural traits that coalesce into an integrated psychological pattern or ethos.
87. What is 'ethnomusicology'?
Correct Answer: b) The cross-cultural study of music in its cultural, social, and cognitive contexts
Explanation:
Ethnomusicology bridges anthropology and musicology to examine how music functions as a vital cultural practice across human societies.
88. What is 'forensic anthropology'?
Correct Answer: b) The application of physical anthropology and osteology to legal settings, assisting law enforcement in identifying skeletal human remains and establishing cause of death
Explanation:
Forensic anthropologists analyze human skeletal remains in legal investigations to determine age, sex, ancestry, stature, and trauma.
89. What is 'cultural resource management' (CRM) in archaeology?
Correct Answer: b) A branch of applied archaeology dedicated to protecting, surveying, and salvaging cultural resources and archaeological sites threatened by development
Explanation:
CRM archaeologists conduct compliance-driven surveys and excavations ahead of modern construction projects to preserve heritage.
90. What does 'enculturation shock' (culture shock) describe?
Correct Answer: b) The psychological disorientation and anxiety experienced when operating within a totally unfamiliar cultural environment
Explanation:
Culture shock is the acute psychological stress caused by losing familiar cultural cues and social norms when entering an unfamiliar society.
91. What is 'unilineal cultural evolution'?
Correct Answer: a) The theory that all cultures evolve along a single, universal developmental track from savagery through barbarism to civilization
Explanation:
19th-century unilineal evolutionism (Morgan, Tylor) posited that all human societies pass through identical evolutionary stages.
92. What theoretical framework did Franz Boas propose to counter 19th-century unilineal evolution, emphasizing that each culture must be understood through its own unique historical trajectory?
Correct Answer: b) Historical Particularism
Explanation:
Historical particularism argued that each culture is the product of its own unique history rather than a stage in a universal evolutionary ladder.
93. What is 'neolocal residence' in kinship and family studies?
Correct Answer: b) A post-marital residence pattern where a newly married couple establishes an independent household apart from both sets of parents
Explanation:
Neolocality is characteristic of industrial societies and foraging bands where geographic mobility precludes permanent extended household attachment.
94. What is 'patrilocal (virilocal) residence'?
Correct Answer: b) A post-marital residence pattern where a newly married couple lives with or near the husband's father's family
Explanation:
Patrilocality keeps related males together in corporate descent groups, commonly found in patrilineal agricultural and pastoral societies.
95. What is 'matrilocal (uxorilocal) residence'?
Correct Answer: b) A post-marital residence pattern where a newly married couple lives with or near the wife's mother's family
Explanation:
Matrilocality keeps related females together in matrilineal societies, strengthening female cooperation in subsistence economies like horticulture.
96. What does 'bilateral descent' trace kinship through?
Correct Answer: c) Both maternal and paternal lines equally, forming kindreds
Explanation:
Bilateral descent traces kinship through both mother's and father's sides, typical of industrial nations and many foraging societies.
97. What is a 'lineage' in anthropological kinship studies?
Correct Answer: b) A unilineal descent group whose members can trace their genealogical connection back to a known common ancestor
Explanation:
Lineages are corporate unilineal descent groups where members demonstrate genealogical links to a specific apical ancestor.
98. What is a 'clan' in kinship organization?
Correct Answer: b) A unilineal descent group whose members claim descent from a common apical ancestor (often an animal or mythical figure) but cannot specify exact genealogical links
Explanation:
Clans comprise multiple lineages whose ultimate common ancestor is often mythological or totemic rather than genealogically verifiable.
99. What is 'neocolonialism' in political and economic anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The indirect economic, financial, and cultural dominance exerted over developing nations by industrialized powers or transnational corporations without direct military occupation
Explanation:
Neocolonialism analyzes ongoing economic exploitation and dependency of post-colonial nations within global capitalist structures.
100. What is 'agency' in sociocultural anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The capacity of individuals to act independently, make their own free choices, and exert influence over their social conditions and cultural structures
Explanation:
Agency contrasts with strict structural determinism, emphasizing human creativity, resistance, and intentional action within social constraints.
101. What does 'symbolic capital', a concept by Pierre Bourdieu, represent?
Correct Answer: b) Prestige, honor, authority, and recognition that can be converted into other forms of power within a social field
Explanation:
Symbolic capital is prestige and social credit that accrues to individuals when their authority and standing are recognized as legitimate.
102. What is 'social stratification' in anthropological analysis?
Correct Answer: b) A system by which a society ranks categories of people in a hierarchical structure based on unequal access to wealth, power, and prestige
Explanation:
Social stratification creates permanent hierarchical layers (classes or castes) where inequality is institutionalized.
103. What is the difference between a 'caste system' and a 'class system' of social stratification?
Correct Answer: b) Caste systems are closed social strata based on ascribed status with strict endogamy, whereas class systems permit open social mobility based largely on achieved economic status.
Explanation:
Caste systems restrict mobility through ascribed birth and ritual purity, while class systems allow theoretical upward or downward mobility based on economic achievement.
104. What is 'egalitarian redistribution' in economic anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) A system where wealth is channeled to a central authority (like a chief or big man) who subsequently redistributes it back to community members during public feasts
Explanation:
Redistribution operates in chiefdoms and big-man economies, leveling wealth disparities and cementing political authority through generosity.
105. What is a 'big man' political system in anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) An influential, achieved leader in egalitarian tribal societies (particularly Melanesia) who builds regional political influence through personal charisma, persuasion, and generous feasting
Explanation:
Big men achieve leadership through personal prowess, persuasion, and mobilizing followers via competitive gift-giving and feasting.
106. What is 'slash-and-burn' (swidden) agriculture primarily criticized for by modern ecological anthropologists when population pressures increase?
Correct Answer: b) Shortening fallow periods, leading to soil exhaustion, weed invasion, and permanent environmental degradation
Explanation:
While sustainable at low population densities, swidden agriculture degrades when land scarcity prevents adequate forest regeneration during fallow cycles.
107. What does 'historical linguistics' reconstruct?
Correct Answer: b) How languages change over time and the genetic relationships among language families using comparative methods
Explanation:
Historical linguistics tracks sound shifts and cognates to group languages into families and reconstruct extinct proto-languages.
108. What is a 'cognate' in comparative linguistic anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) Words in related languages that share a common ancestral root and similar phonetic form
Explanation:
Cognates (such as English 'mother', German 'Mutter', and Latin 'mater') provide foundational evidence of genealogical language relationships.
109. What is 'glottochronology'?
Correct Answer: b) A lexicostatistical method attempting to date when two related languages diverged from a common ancestor based on vocabulary replacement rates
Explanation:
Glottochronology attempts to calculate the time depth of language splits by measuring the retention of core vocabulary over centuries.
110. What is 'pidgin' language?
Correct Answer: b) A simplified contact language with reduced grammar and vocabulary developed by speakers of mutually unintelligible languages for basic trade
Explanation:
Pidgins arise out of trade necessity, lacking native speakers and featuring stripped-down grammatical structures.
111. What is a 'creole' language in sociolinguistics and anthropology?
Correct Answer: a) A pidgin language that has acquired native speakers across generations, developing complex grammatical rules and expanded vocabulary
Explanation:
When children acquire a pidgin as their native tongue, innate grammar principles expand it into a fully structured creole language.
112. What is 'diglossia'?
Correct Answer: b) A situation where two distinct varieties of a language are spoken by the same community under different social conditions (e.g., a formal 'high' variety and a colloquial 'low' variety)
Explanation:
Diglossia regulates language use where a prestigious high variety is used for formal writing/religion, and a low variety for daily casual speech.
113. What is 'code-switching'?
Correct Answer: b) The alternating use of two or more languages or dialects within the same conversation or social interaction
Explanation:
Code-switching is a sophisticated communicative practice among multilingual speakers, governed by strict grammatical and contextual rules.
114. What is 'ethnocide'?
Correct Answer: b) The deliberate destruction or forced assimilation of a culture's traditions, language, and identity by a dominant power without necessarily killing its people physically
Explanation:
Ethnocide targets cultural destruction (e.g., residential boarding schools), whereas genocide targets physical biological extermination.
115. What is 'genocide' in anthropological and historical analysis?
Correct Answer: b) The deliberate, systematic extermination, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group
Explanation:
Genocide represents the ultimate form of violent intergroup destruction, recognized as an international crime against humanity.
116. What is 'indigenous anthropology'?
Correct Answer: a) Anthropological research conducted by scientists studying their own native society or ethnic group
Explanation:
Indigenous anthropology challenges traditional Western 'outsider' paradigms, bringing insider perspectives and critical decolonizing methodologies to research.
117. What is 'postmodernism' in anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) A theoretical movement questioning objective scientific truth claims in ethnography, emphasizing multiple voices, power dynamics, and the literary construction of texts
Explanation:
Anthropological postmodernism critiques traditional positivist authority in ethnography, highlighting rhetoric, subjectivity, and colonial power.
118. What is 'feminist anthropology'?
Correct Answer: b) A critical paradigm challenging androcentric biases in traditional anthropological research, highlighting gender roles, intersectionality, and women's experiences globally
Explanation:
Feminist anthropology transformed the discipline by correcting male-biased ethnographies and centering gender as a core organizing social category.
119. What is 'queer anthropology'?
Correct Answer: b) An anthropological approach examining how gender identity, sexuality, and heteronormativity are culturally constructed, contested, and performed across diverse societies
Explanation:
Queer anthropology applies queer theory to deconstruct normative assumptions about sex, gender, and kinship in cross-cultural contexts.
120. What is 'political ecology'?
Correct Answer: b) An analytical approach examining how economic power structures, political institutions, and global capitalism influence environmental issues and resource management
Explanation:
Political ecology links environmental degradation and resource access directly to political and economic inequalities at local and global scales.
121. What is 'medical pluralism'?
Correct Answer: b) The coexistence and simultaneous use of multiple medical systems (e.g., Western biomedicine, traditional herbalism, spiritual healing) within a single society
Explanation:
Medical pluralism reflects how patients across diverse cultures often consult multiple therapeutic modalities simultaneously for healing.
122. What is 'biocultural anthropology'?
Correct Answer: b) An integrative approach exploring how human biology and culture continually interact and shape one another over evolutionary and developmental time
Explanation:
Biocultural anthropology rejects strict nature-versus-nurture binaries, demonstrating how cultural practices influence human biology and vice versa.
123. What is 'epigenetics' in the context of biocultural anthropology?
Correct Answer: b) Changes in gene expression and regulation caused by environmental and cultural factors—such as stress, diet, and trauma—without altering the underlying DNA sequence
Explanation:
Epigenetics reveals how environmental stressors and lived experiences leave molecular marks on gene expression passed across generations.
124. What is 'sapienization' in paleoanthropology?
Correct Answer: b) The evolutionary process leading to the emergence of anatomically modern Homo sapiens, encompassing biological and behavioral modernization
Explanation:
Sapienization refers to the complex biocultural evolution that produced modern human neural architecture, symbolic culture, and anatomy.
125. What is the 'Neolithic Revolution' (Agricultural Revolution)?
Correct Answer: b) The profound historical shift from foraging (hunting and gathering) to agriculture and animal domestication, transforming human social organization
Explanation:
The Neolithic Revolution occurred independently across multiple global regions, sparking sedentary village life, surplus, and social stratification.
126. What archaeological evidence is primary for identifying early plant domestication?
Correct Answer: b) Morphological changes in seeds (e.g., tougher rachis, larger grain size) and tools like sickles and grinding stones
Explanation:
Domesticated plants undergo genetic and morphological shifts (like non-shattering seed heads) selected by human farming over millennia.
127. What archaeological evidence indicates early animal domestication?
Correct Answer: b) Changes in skeletal morphology, demographic shifts in age/sex profiles of butchered herds, and presence outside natural native habitats
Explanation:
Zooarchaeologists identify domestication by tracking demographic profiles (culling young males) and morphological reduction in size.
128. What is 'urban revolution', a concept coined by V. Gordon Childe?
Correct Answer: b) The historical emergence of ancient cities, centralized states, monumental architecture, writing, and social classes from Neolithic farming societies
Explanation:
Childe's urban revolution marked the transition from agricultural villages to complex urban civilizations with state-level administration.
129. What is 'state' society defined as in anthropological political systems?
Correct Answer: b) A centralized, autonomous political unit encompassing many communities, possessing a monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force, class stratification, and formal legal bureaucracy
Explanation:
States represent the most centralized political form, featuring codified laws, taxation, military standing forces, and strict social stratification.
