Enjoy these cultural anthropology web activities!

PART I FOUNDATIONS OF CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Archaeology, Physical/Biological Anthropology, and Primatology

1. Explore current archaeological research projects and sites. Do any projects also involve linguistic, physical, and cultural anthropology? How? Why might it be important to study the linkages between the four fields of anthropology?

2. Explore this richly illustrated site on ancient civilizations of Mexico and Central America. How does archaeology contribute to the understanding of prehistoric and ancient food production and other economic activities? How were the economies of the Maya, Mixtec, Zapotec, and Aztec civilizations similar and different?

3. Use links to see a map and images of Copan and other Mayan sites in Honduras and Guatemala. Then read about the discovery of the tomb of a female Mayan chief, Margarita, also called "the Red Lady," in the necropolis of Copan. How were her treasures looted in 1997 and later returned? Why has the National Geographic Society had to revise its web feature, "The Lords of Copan"?

4. Read a definition and explanation of sociobiology and an essay by its founder, Edward O. Wilson, and explore the issue of human aggression. Then take a tutorial on evolutionary psychology via links from the Center for Evolutionary Psychology at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Read "Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer" by Leda Cosmides and John Tooby, and listen to the audio clip "Has Natural Selection Shaped How Humans Reason?" According to this perspective, how could both prosocial behavior, such as gift giving and altruism, and antisocial behavior, such as aggression and homicide and warfare, have adaptive value for human evolution?

5. At this site, follow links to see a description of Yanomami culture, reviews of films, and photos of the Yanomami from Robert Heider's Seeing Anthropology. In what ways may the Yanomami be seen as "fierce"? What do you see as the sources of social aggression in Yanomami society and culture? How might reproductive success, environmental insufficiency, and population pressure all play a role?

6. Read a biography of Eleanor Leacock and an essay on her critique against biological determinism and The Bell Curve, a controversial book about intelligence and race. What is biological determinism? What is cultural determinism? What might be some examples of ways that biology and culture interact to shape human behavior?

Ethnography and the Study of Behavior

1. What is culture? This site provides many answers to this question, from different historical and theoretical perspectives. How is the site's "baseline" definition similar to and different from your text's definition? Why does there continue to be a debate about the meaning of the word culture?

2. Read the full text of Horace Miner's "Body Ritual Among the Naciremas." In your opinion, what motivated Miner to write this piece, and why did it become a classic of introductory anthropology? How does this essay relate to the concept of ethnocentrism? If you were to write an ethnographic account of Nacireman culture at the end of the twentieth century, what rituals would you choose to describe?

3. Follow the alphabetical link at this site to locate biographical information on Franz Boas. How did his ideas about cultural relativism impact methods in cultural anthropology? How do his views differ from anthropologists Louis Henry Morgan and Edward Taylor?

4. Trace Margaret Mead's life and career as an anthropologist, and see images of her doing fieldwork in Samoa and New Guinea. Based on the information at these biographical sites, how might Mead's research emphases and fieldwork techniques best be understood in terms of the historical context of anthropology in her times?

5. Visit the Fieldwork Online page of the Center for Social Anthropology and Computing (CSAC). This page features individual student researchers in CSAC's Ethnographies Gallery and includes students' field notes, documents, audio recordings, still and moving images, and weekly or monthly updates from the field. Follow a project and communicate with the researcher. What questions can you ask about beginning the fieldwork process and avoiding common mistakes in selecting information to record?

6. Read an essay on Folklife and Fieldwork by ethnologist Peter Bartis of the American Folklife Center. Why did the U.S. Congress found the American Folklife Center in 1976 as a publicly funded institution? How is fieldwork conducted for collecting folklore, and how are subjects chosen?

7. Experience Laura Tamakoshil's fieldwork site The Anthropologist in the Field. How has this researcher prepared for the field, selected the site and subject, entered the field and gained rapport, and collected data? How did she overcome culture shock while living in Gende society? What field methods did she use and how did they relate to her research goals? How can she be sure that she is observing all the factors associated with her subject and understanding their importance?

8. Visit the American Anthropological Association home page and follow links to information about research ethics in the social sciences. What provisions were contained in the 1970 standard code of ethics? What is meant by informed consent? What other ethical principles are included in the code? Today, how does the American Anthropological Association address issues of contemporary research, research standards, and issues of fieldwork safety in politically volatile regions?

9. Read about the history of the American Ethnological Society. Why was the Society founded? What were some early debates among members of the Society? What are some current debates in ethnology? How has membership in the Society changed over time?

10. Explore the studies conducted by the Applied Ethnography Program of the U.S. National Parks Service to preserve, protect, and interpret park resources. What are the advantages and drawbacks of each data collection method presented? List some of the Program's goals. Why are so many different types of studies required?

11. Visit the Society for Visual Anthropology. What do visual anthropologists study? How does their research help to promote ethical standards in anthropological fieldwork? What are some potential dangers of using visual media, such as photographs and films, to capture a culture?

12. View a gallery of ethnographic photo exhibits by Jeanne Fitzsimmons. What do these photographs teach us about the African and Indian cultures they portray? What kinds of information might be missing from or left out of these images? Visit the National Anthropological Archives (NAA) and view some of the ethnographic photographs collected there. For example, view historic photos made in Africa by H.R. Acebes and in the Philippines by R. E. Ahlborn. What other primary source images and text are collected in the Archives? How might a visual anthropologist analyze these photos?

13. Read an essay on Changing Traditions in Northern Ethnography. According to this author, what challenges are anthropologists of the Yukon Territory currently facing? How are they adapting their ethnographic methods in order to meet these challenges?

14. Interact with a recent ethnographic study of Silicon Valley. How does this project reflect current trends in ethnography? At this site, one researcher mentions that he studies "life outside the screen," the culture of those who work with computers, while others study life "on the other side of the screen," the culture of cyberspace. How do you think anthropological research of online "communities" will further transform ethnographic research?

15. Read some first-hand accounts by former Peace Corps volunteers. How did these volunteers experience culture shock? How did they adapt to living and working in different cultures? What did they learn from their struggles to adapt to new ways of life?

16. Read the updated principles and standards of the Oral History Association. How do these standards demonstrate an awareness of the influence of race, class, gender, age, and ethnicity on the interviewing process? How do the standards define the relationship between the oral historian and the subject?

17. Learn more about participant observation at the site for Community Adaptation and Sustainable Livelihoods. What are some potential drawbacks of participant observation? What measures can researchers take to overcome the Hawthorne effect? How do participant observation and participatory action research differ?

18. Explore the ethnographic archives at California State University at Chico. Read Dr. Carolyn Brown Heinz's transcriptions and field notes. Which interviewing techniques does she employ? What kinds of information and observations does she include in her field notes? Also read the annotated field notes of an ethnographer who recorded observations of the Mambila of Nigeria in the 1930s. What methodological factors do the annotations make evident?

19. Survey the contents of recent issues of the journal Cultural Anthropology Methods (CAM). What methods in cultural anthropology do the articles suggest are areas of current interest?

20. Read a Career Monograph on Anthropology, which describes career opportunities in anthropology. Which, if any, careers might interest you most? Which anthropologists might you encounter or work with in your other chosen career? How do you think an anthropologist might help you to do a better job?

Language and Communication

1. Follow links to hear a children's story told in Samoan and to survey an online tutorial on the Samoan language. What are some links between language and culture in this example? What values would likely be protected through language preservation?

2. Read a study on the way mothers talk to their babies. This study involved analyzing videos of hearing mothers playing with their hearing babies and deaf mothers playing with their deaf babies. To what extent did the mothers use baby talk? What paralanguage was missing from hearing mothers' interactions with their children? What other differences can you identify that relate to deaf culture? Why do you think this research report is entitled "Making Every Sign Count"?

3. Visit the Human Communication Laboratory at Columbia University. According to psychologists, why do humans gesture when they speak? What other aspects of human communication are studied in this lab? Then go to the Psycholinguistics page at the Max Planck Institute and read the Introduction. What is psycholinguistics? What are the six areas of study in that field? Who were the pioneers? Why do people study psycholinguistics? What are the implications of this field for cultural anthropologists?

4. Read an anthropological analysis of the closing ceremonies of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The closing ceremonies were Australia's chance to invite the world to Sydney for the 2000 Olympic Games. Through what symbols did Australia present itself in its few minutes of television air time, and what did that presentation really mean in terms of forging a new national identity?

5. Use alphabetical links to read biographies of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf. Find out more about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis through links at the Theory in Anthropology site. Why do researchers increasingly favor the view that thought is language, that language is simply an extension of thought? What evidence is there for the opposite view that language structures thought? How do you think this question can be resolved?

6. Read a story on a 1999 panel discussion about language origins and the brain basis of language. How do linguists, archaeologists, neuropsychologists, geneticists, and other experts try to explain language origins by pooling their information? Then visit the Linguasphere Observatory and follow the links. What is meant by a linguasphere, and what is being observed there? What is a language, and how is it different from a dialect? How can kinship and marriage patterns be inferred from dialects and languages? How do linguistic taboos suggest rules for exogamy? Why do experts think there are fewer languages in the world today than existed during the Upper Paleolithic? Then read a 1999 news article, "Last Rites for Secret Women's Language." Why did rural women in a region of China develop their own secret written language ages ago, and why is it disappearing today? As a cultural anthropologist how might you interpret relationships between language and gender? Between language and development?

7. Look at these exhibits of wampum made by member nations of the Iroquois League to record their treaties with Europeans. How can the wampum belts be read? Why are they more a system of communication and symbolic representation than a form of art? What was in the wampum that recorded an early 17^th century treaty with the Vatican?

8. Study the family tree and phonetics chart of the Mon language of Burma and Thailand. How is Mon related to the language family of Mon-Khmer, and where did the speakers of Mon-Khmer come from? Is Mon related to Hmong? Who are Hmong speakers? Visit a K-12 educational program for Hmong-speaking students who are learning English as a second language. What do you think are the biggest challenges for Hmong speakers in the process of learning English?

9. Investigate the U.S. Department of Education Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs. How many minority languages are there in the U.S.? What "minority language affairs" does the Office address? Survey the information for respecting, teaching, and learning languages at the National Clearinghouse on Bilingual Education. How might a cultural anthropologist interpret these sites in terms of relationships between language and culture and between language and social structure?

10. Read about pidgins and creoles as "contact languages." What is the difference between pidgins and creoles? In what contact situations do these constructed languages develop? Take a quiz on pidgins and creoles at a sociolinguistics site to see if you can identify the dominant contact language in the examples given. Then go to a word list for the numbers 1 - 10 comparing the world's known pidgin and creole languages. Are you surprised to discover that most are constructed from dominant languages other than English?

11. Read a paper on the post-contact languages of Western Australia from earliest times to the present. What non-aboriginal languages influenced Aborigine pidgins and creoles? Compare and contrast this story to a brief online history of the Konkani language. What patterns do you see in language change? How does language change reflect social and cultural change?

12. Visit the Language Policy Research Center in Israel. What is Israel's language policy? What minority languages are involved? Compare and contrast Israel's language policy with the United States'. Read, for example, Robert Underwood's 1995 statement to Congress opposing the English-only movement in its bid to allow only English as the official language of the United States. In what ways do you think pluralistic societies deal with multilingualism? At SIL International's online literacy education project, follow the lingualinks to read the report on local history and its relationship to national history in relation to language use. How is language an instrument of assimilation, socialization, and information control in pluralistic societies?

13. Compare and contrast three programs for language preservation. Start with the Potawatomi Web and the Comanche Language and Culture Preservation Committee. Then read "Did You Know?" at the web page of 'Aha Punana Leo, an indigenous language revitalization program for the native Hawaiian language. What have these three programs done effectively to preserve their native languages? What language policy has permitted this attention to preservation?

14. Visit the African Immigrant Folklife Study Project in Washington, D.C. This study focuses on cross-cultural communication and the preservation of NigerianYoruba language and culture. See and hear a Yoruba naming ceremony at this site.

15. Read a biography of Noam Chomsky and a summary of his contributions to the study of language and communication. Chomsky also became an activist for social and political change. Read online excerpts from his 1988 book, Manufacturing Consent. According to Chomsky, what is the primary function of the mass media? Why must we be critical of this function?

16. How might an anthropologist study the use of semantics in communication? As an example, read articles by war correspondents on cultural and political problems in news reporting. For a historical view, read Kristian Kahrs' study on Journalism early in the Vietnam War in 1962-1966. Then read Tom Gjelten's 1997 report on "Professionalism in War Reporting" and Kate Adie's speech on the "Ethics of War Reporting." What communication issues are involved, and why are they important? Visit NYU's Center for War, Peace and the News Media and the Institute of War and Peace Reporting. How do these organizations define journalism's role in peace and war? What guidelines do they offer for greater objectivity in reporting?

17. How might an anthropologist study the use of special language codes? For example, according to this business news article, how is guanxi in China both similar to and different from networking in the United States? What are some Asian business code words? For example, what are ojigi, ki, and shinyo, and why are they important in the conduct of business and business relationships?

18. View an online exhibit of body adornment among the Canela Indians of Brazil at the National Museum of Natural History. What are the social and cultural contexts of body modification in Canela culture? What factors of age, sex, group identity, social status, symbolic communication, and ritualism are involved? Then visit the Jade Dragon tattoo and body piercing parlor online in Chicago, and view the examples of body modifications offered there. What are the social and cultural contexts of body modification in American culture? What factors of age, sex, group identity, social status, symbolic communication, and ritualism are involved?

19. Read a 1996 paper by anthropologist Theresa Wall on "Body Modification and Ornamentation." Wall studied two Polynesian cultures, Maori and Samoan, and two Amazonian cultures, Kayapo and Mehinaku and compared their bodily adornment practices as art and as complex symbol systems. How do these symbol systems also relate to understanding social structure and social organization in these societies?

Expressive and Material Culture

1. Listen to the Argonne Chime. This is a meaningful synthesized musical sound, but is it art? See the Arts in Science exhibit at this site also. How could you use these examples to define what is art? View Internet for the Fine Arts and sample the art database and dictionary, following links. What categories are used to classify art? What folk art is shown in the ArtHaus, and how is it different from fine art and functional art? Visitors are invited to submit their self-selected art work to be put up on this site. How might this practice affect the classification and valuation of online "fine"art? Who do you think should judge what is art? Can art be judged universally as well as in terms of the specific contexts of history, technology, society, and culture?

2. Explore virtual museums of the arts and view, compare, and contrast their online "Exhibits" and any supporting documents. For example, visit the St. Petersburg Museum of Fine Arts and The Minneapolis Institute of Arts. How are genre and styles and periods of art classified? How are arts and crafts of different cultures integrated into the collections and presented in exhibitions? Are the cultural contexts of art pieces explained? In each exploration identify pieces that you may not regard as fine art. How would you classify them? What are your criteria? Choose two pieces from each museum that evoke a strong response in you. As a cultural anthropologist, what questions might you have about these works?

3. How does art relate to social structure? Go to ArtLex, a comprehensive online lexicon of fine arts and architecture. Take the Survey on the home page. What information about your social status and social class are you providing? Why do you think ArtLex wants this information? Do you think this survey would yield different data for, say, France? Why or why not? Use the alphabetical links to read the definitional essay on "art". According to this source, what is art? Then look up "high art" and "low art." How might this distinction relate to how open or closed, comparatively, the class systems are in the U. S. and France? How might the distinction account for differences in patterns of French and American participation in the arts?

4. View examples of Upper Paleolithic Venus figurines, and read interpretations of Venus figures as secular art and as sacred objects. What do the figures all have in common despite great geographic distribution? Then read LeRoy McDermot's paper in which he interprets Venus figures as women's self-representations. Are you persuaded by his arguments? Why or why not? How does this example suggest other issues in art and gender?

5. View this photo gallery at Rock Art, an organization dedicated to the preservation of rock paintings and petroglyphs. Then view Texas Rock Art in the Cultural History Division of the Texas Memorial Museum. How are these pictographs related to religion? What qualities do rock paintings share?

6. In 1999 early prehistoric flutes were discovered in an archaeological excavation in China. See and hear these flutes online and read how they were discovered. Then read about an even older Neanderthal flute.

7. View Mayan and Aztec art. How did artists represent Quetzalcoatl and other figures in Mayan mythology? How do these representations compare with mythology in Western Art?

8. Survey this site for the collection of Indigenous People's Literature. What kinds of documents and translations are collected here? What indigenous people are represented? Which of these people are hunters and foragers?

9. View two guided photo essays with text on Yoruba and Akan art in wood ("Cutting to the Essence") and metal ("Shaping for the Fire"). What works of art are created using these complex traditional techniques and what are their social uses?

10. Go to the National Museum of the American Indian and view the exhibits. Undertake an online study of a virtual totem pole. Where is this totem pole and who was the artist? What is the story of Thunderbird? How can each crest on the totem pole be interpreted? In what ways do totem poles as an art form overlap with the kinship systems of peoples of the Pacific Northwest?

11. World Art Treasures contains 100,000 slides of art from China, Egypt, India, Japan, and Europe. See also Virtual Exhibits and Trips listed at that site, and choose one to explore in depth. Anthropology Exhibits on the WWW also provides links that bring you to a wide variety of arts-related virtual exhibits and trips, such as moving and still images and sounds, including archival film footage. See also Words of Art: Online Glossary of Theory and Criticism for the Visual Arts, which covers all art media, and the resources of the Canadian Museum of Civilization.

12. For images and information on ancient and classical Chinese art, view also Chinese Antiquities and The Chinese Fine Arts Society Web Site. What patterns and trends characterize Chinese art history? What kinds of objects are available to collectors at Han Palace Fine Arts?

13. Explore Islamic Art. For example, how and why did Arabic Calligraphy develop into an art form? For examples of traditional and contemporary Arab art of the Middle East, follow links at The Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites: Art and Culture. What patterns and trends do you see in Islamic art?

14. Visit the Society for Ethnomusicology, and survey Ethnomusicology Online. Focus on a particular culture area, read ethnological data, and listen to recordings. View movies and text on actual ethnomusicologists doing field work on location and reporting their findings. What technical knowledge and skills do ethnomusicologists need? How do they collect their data?

15. Tour a virtual exhibit on sacred Cambodian court dance, and learn about the costumes, makeup, steps, gestures, and stories. For example, who is the goddess of the waters, and why was this dance traditionally performed in the Cambodian court? See and hear Mani Mekhala perform this dance.

16. View prehistoric and early historic architectural styles worldwide at the Digital Archive of Architecture. Follow links to narrow your investigation. Also visit the Center for Architectural Preservation in Israel, one of many organizations worldwide concerned with the preservation and restoration of antiquities. In this instance, what challenges do art and architecture conservators face in Israel?

17. Take the virtual tour of the Great Kiva at Chetro Ketl, a prime example of Mesoamerican architecture. How was the Great Kiva ornamented, and how can those ornamentations be interpreted? Follow related links. For example, how are Mesoamerican pyramids like and unlike the Egyptian pyramids? What technologies does pyramid-building require?

18. Click on Japanese Gardens at this site to view Zen gardens. Follow the links to related sites. How do Japanese landscaping, gardening, and flower arranging relate both to architecture and material culture and to aesthetic and religious values in Japanese traditional culture?

19. What are the principal concerns of the World Leisure and Recreation Association (WLRA)? How is the WLRA involved with the United Nations? Do you agree that there are universal considerations in people's choices of leisure, recreation, and sports? Why or why not? How might a cultural anthropologist analyze leisure and recreational activities in pre-industrial societies? Follow links at the Natural Resources Research Information pages. For example, what are some issues in recreation on public lands? Do you think the socio-psychological perspectives on outdoor recreation have cross-cultural validity? What is ecotourism? Why is ecotourism in the less developed countries a concern? What does the Cooperative Research Center for Sustainable Tourism do?

20. View the map, photos, and movie about the Basques. According to information at this comprehensive site, why are the Basques afraid they will lose their culture? What does Picasso's painting Guernica have to do with this concern? Now visit the Online Picasso Project. View Picasso's works identified as "War Stories," including Guernica, and read the New York Magazine article about the cultural, historical, and political significance of these works. How would you summarize the cultural, historical, and political significance of Guernica?

21. During the Chinese Cultural Revolution, government officials in Shanghai commissioned art to teach communist values. The art form, lianhuanhua (literature in line), was cartoons with picture stories and text. Read some of these comic strips online. For instance, what happens in "Railroad Guerillas"? What revolutionary and communist values are expressed? Why do you think cartoons were chosen as the genre? Who owns art anyway? How is art related to issues of free speech? Explore present-day issues of art as speech through links at Art Net.

22. View the French Ministry of Culture's online questionnaire (Tous les savoirs du monde), soliciting information to develop programs that will help increase public participation in and access to literature and the arts via the Internet and World Wide Web. This concept is similar to the G7Bibliotheca Universalis project in the United States, which includes Project Gutenberg. To what extent do you think Internet access could affect access to literature and art? To what extent do you think issues of Internet access could lead to the perpetuation of social and global inequalities?

23. Is art political? Explore links at In Motion, a magazine dedicated to art for social change. What do they mean by pointing out that in their magazine, "art will not be separated from the society in which it was created"? Follow links from Art Changes to the articles on Creating Art in the Balkans. According to these articles, how did Albanian artists express disagreement with governmental policies and military actions in the 1990s?