(Part 3) Top products from r/AskAnthropology

Yeah, anthropology definitely has it's hands in pretty much all other disciplines in some form of fashion. Mostly because knowledge production is a fundamental aspect of human life, so anthropologists are interested in it in all its forms.

> To be honest, the thing I'm most worried about is that the social justice approach to ethnography is a little left of where I want to be, but I've spoken with a U of M professor, Erik Mueggler, and he showed me the topics that were accepted from PhD candidates recently, and they all seem to have this element to them. Anthropology seems to be undergoing a penance for its ethnocentric theorizing and homogenizing in the past, but I feel that I fall much more in that vein (hopefully without the ethnocentrism).

I wouldn't call it penance, I would say anthropologists today are deeply concerned with how their work impacts the peoples, communities, and places where they conduct research. Yeah, that's partly a reaction to the early days of anthropology's role as colonialism's handmaiden, but it's also the result of theoretical and methodological shifts that occurred beginning in the 1970s. I don't think anthropology's theorizing historically has been overly ethnocentric, quite the contrary really, at least relative to other social science fields. But having some aspect of social justice in a project makes a lot of sense for most anthropological projects. After all, you have to live there for a year, you get to know people, you come to understand their struggles, and they become your friends. So you want to help them, and that often entails using whatever kinds of power and privilege you have to help improve their lives.

Some projects are more infused with social justice than others. It does not need to be a major component of your research, but you will certainly be asked at some point what positive effects your work has on the people you work with and how you will minimize the possibility that you're exploiting them. For example, I'm a medical anthropologist and most of my research questions are about medicine, knowledge production, and gender/sexuality. I don't have social justice all loaded up in my questions, but I do care about treating patients with respect and doing whatever I can to help them since they give their time to and share their lives with me.

> my main question is can you point me to a good undergrad style overview of current theory a la Max Weber's Basic Sociological Terms?

I highly recommend Richard Perry's "Five Key Concepts in Anthropological Thinking." You can get used copies on Amazon for around 1/3 the price of a new copy (https://www.amazon.com/Five-Key-Concepts-Anthropological-Thinking/dp/0130971405).

You might also check out Lavenda & Schultz "Core Concepts in Cultural Anthropology," which I think is in its 6th edition now. It's a concise and accessible introduction to the field of cultural anthro, including some basic discussion about methods. You might also check out Ottenheimer's "The Anthropology of Language" for a background on linguistic anthro, which seems like something you might be interested in.

The only thing we know about the beaker folk is what they left in the ground and a rough idea of which groups today are descended from them.

It's probable that they had some kind of indo-european type religion but they morph into other cultures centuries before the first culture recognised as Celtic comes along. Beaker culture in Britain ends around the late 19th century bc. It ended in Europe almost 500 years earlier.
Urnfield, the first culture considered to be closely linked to Celts, begins around the 14 century bc, that's 500 years after beaker culture ends in Britain and a thousand years after it ends in Europe.
These are some long time frames so beakers don't really have anything to do with the Celts other than being distant ancestors.

Urnfield isn't Celtic per se either, it's the culture that precedes Halstatt and based on cemetery locations it's considered to represent a natural transition rather than an imposed one by invaders. There is no writing from this era so no way to know what was being spoken and that goes doubly for what myths and histories were known back then. We barely know about Gallo-Roman religion other than names on statues that being linked to Roman deities may give an indication to their attributes and links to each other. A handful of vague quotes by Romans and Greeks covers our sum total of knowledge of the pre-Roman religion.

It is the mediæval Irish and Welsh who really give us something to look at. Christianised though much of it is and warped by the way the tales were passed down, we can make sense of much of the stories and see that many of the heroes are actually the old gods, sometimes only in fragmentary and seemingly random form.

For instance in the Ulster Cycle, there is an odd bit in a story about the hero Fraoch whose wife and cattle have been abducted. He seeks the help of the hero Conall Cernach. The castle that the wife is being held in is guarded by a serpent but when Conall Cernach appears the serpent simply wraps itself around his waist like a belt and they're free to enter. There is obviously a lot missing in this part of the story.
There is a Gallo-Roman seated deity statue from Etang sur Arroux in France. It has two ram horned snakes circling its waist. It's possible that these two disparate examples from Celtic mythology are related and that the story about the Irish heroes rescuing the wife and cattle contain the remnants of older stories involving the gods.

There are a few good books written by people like Miranda Green but your first look if you haven't already is read the mediæval tales in the Mabinogion, the Ulster Cycle, the Fenian Cycle, the Book of Invasions. It's also worth acquainting yourself with the Historia Britonum and Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain. Monmouth is considered to have largely made his book up but he was also writing in the 12th century ad and so likely had access to books no longer in existence which could have contained some actual fact-emphasis on the could.

If you want to know more, then work out some specific questions because the question here is very broadstrokes.

I'd also suggest reading the primer by Barry Cunliffe, [The Ancient Celts 2nd Ed.(2018).]
(https://www.amazon.com/Ancient-Celts-Barry-Cunliffe/dp/0198752938/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/145-7744108-5355657?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0198752938&pd_rd_r=77004b13-aeda-4ae7-a99d-b611e0144ae6&pd_rd_w=4PIuW&pd_rd_wg=XxrE3&pf_rd_p=5cfcfe89-300f-47d2-b1ad-a4e27203a02a&pf_rd_r=ER4B229KP8Y3A74593PH&psc=1&refRID=ER4B229KP8Y3A74593PH)

The best books in my experience have been overviews of Aegean prehistory. There's an incredible amount of scholarship, so it's really just about finding a good overview and drilling down on specific topics/sites that interest you.

For advanced undergrads/early grads the standards are typically the Cambridge Companion to the Aegean Bronze Age, the Oxford Handbook of the Bronze Age Aegean, and Aegean Art and Architecture.

All of these can get a bit technical, especially with regards to chronology and such. Of those three Aegean Art and Architecture is probably the most readable. There are older monographs devoted to Crete specifically, but they tend to be older (like 1960's) and quite out of date.

Are you interested in a particular phase, site, or facet of the civilization? Because that would help narrow it down. Keep in mind that there are huge gaps in our understanding of the Minoans and their culture. You aren't going to find many specifics about their culture unless you go down the road of very shaky scholarship.

If your interested in the late Bronze Age collapse (which came some time after the peak of the Minoan civilization), check out the book 1177 B.C.: The Year Civilization Collapsed. It's new and I haven't read it myself, but it's by Eric Cline, who wrote the Oxford Handbook, so it's bound to be well researched. Might be a nice overview of part of the Bronze Age in a more digestible format.

Anyway let me know a bit more about your interests and maybe I can help a bit more. I can also dig out my old syllabi for more suggestions.

Here is a book that is free on Kindle (App for phone or computer also be free if you don't have a kindle).

Here is a book that is just what you said you are looking for.

This book is a little more sociological but cheaper than the one above

I love this website on Gender and Sexuality

Here are a couple of lists of good books around trans issues for kids/teens:

https://www.roomofonesown.com/trans-teens

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-21-best-transgender-b_b_9702762

https://www.bookish.com/articles/21-must-read-books-for-transgender-awareness-month/

Looks interesting; but not really pre-Columbian. I mean, many Native American tales must have pre-Columbian origins - and trickster tales have a distinctively humorous bent - but I don't think we have any that were written down before Columbus.

Still, lotsa funny stuff in 'em. The best collection I know:
http://www.amazon.com/American-Indian-Trickster-Tales-Legends/dp/0140277714

The basics are pretty easy, and can usually be found at a standard Ace, or even easier, just on Amazon.

Metric tape, 5m.

Folding ruler, 2m.

Trowel. Most archaeologists in the US tend to use Marshalltown 45-5 pointer trowels. Some like the margin trowels as well.

Line level.

I'll add more later...

edit:

Honestly, those are the only things you really need. You could also throw in things like a file for your trowel or to touch up a shovel if needed, but usually that's not really necessary. You could buy a Munsell book, but they're quite expensive and someone running a project will have one available.

Charles Seife wrote a book about this from a mathematical perspective (which is great, IMO).

He talks about a few cultures, and says that the Greeks, and thus much of the western world, were a bit twitchy about the concept of zero as a standalone number because it represented a void, which conflicted with the prevailing systems of philosophy. A lot of their math was based on geometry, like the Egyptians before them, and zero didn't exist in geometry. How can you think about a non-space?

There are interesting side effects of this - notably our calendar, which goes from 1 BC (-1) to 1 CE, with no zero, meaning it's very easy to mess up the arithmetic of time around then.

Go nuts. It's really a great book.

Definitely not marriage unless you expand the definition to mean "any long-term romantic pairing of any configuration in numbers and gender." Not trade or war either as many economies / geographies can support neither. Xenophobia, maybe. I'd have to re-read the book.

Music, as mentioned below, is one. Also Humor. Sibling and parental incest avoidance is one as well. There are a lot more but they're not coming to the front of my head right now.

Because they maintained some form of independence and were capable of defending their lands pretty well (the Pyreness create a nice natural barrier). The Celts and Iberians didn't affect Basque life much. The Romans, who did eventually conquer the Basques, didn't develop/Romanize it too well, being more interested on the Mediterranean coast. After the fall of the Romans and the rise of the Franks and Visigoths, the state of Vasconia (Gascony) was more or less consolidated (602), alternating between absolute independence or a client state of the Franks.

With the eventual absorption of Gascony into French politics (~1053), we then see the rise of the Kingdom of Pamplona/Navarre (824), which existed as an independent entity until 1512, when it was absorbed into the greater Spanish crown. It's important to note that Basque regions that were annexed usually asked that their new lords allow them to govern themselves according to their own laws and traditions. These vows, taken by the lord, were done in public/holy places, leaving the Basques to enjoy a greater amount of autonomy.

Shown so far is a history of independence and self-rule from pre-history to the early 16th century. Unfortunately, I don't have much on the history between then and the rise of nationalism. However, if France wasn't able to consolidate French entirely until the late 19th century, and we are to believe that only ~50% of people in France could speak any French in 1789 and only 25% spoke it as their native language in 1871, this raises issues with the idea of a centralized state capable of enforcing its language, specially on semi-autonomous region or ethnic minorities in the peripheries.

This brings us into the modern era. The Basques sided with the losers during the Spanish Civil War. Under Francisco Franco, who took power, speaking Basque was banned in Spain, and the region saw greater immigration from the poorer parts of the country, both of which severely damaged the amount of Basque being spoken.

EDIT: Seeing as this was well received, I'd like to introduce you all to Sancho the Great. He was the Basque king of Pamplona from 1004 to 1035, and before his death untied all of Christian northern Spain, from Galicia, through Leon and Castile, to Navarre and Aragon. His descendants would continue to rule those kingdoms after him. He also greatly improved the roads from Leon to Gascony, leading to increased trade coming in from mainland Europe and the greater popularization of the holy site at Santiago.

So, say what you want of the Basques as a minority group, but I have to side with Mark Kurlansky's biased views of the Basques in that Spanish customs and Iberian Catholicism would not exist as they are without the Basques, among other things.

I am currently advocating to my college to change the Intro to ANthropology book to this one. It is a textbook and it might be on the expensive side, but it has a chapter that is great on Economic Anthropology.

I would suggest the following:

The world of goods: towards an anthropology of consumption

The full book of "Theory in economic anthropology" edited by Jean Ensminger. -- this one's an introduction book-- Here's a chapter

Another Economic Anthropology guidebook: Economies and Culture (Wilk and Cliggett 2007)


Richard Lee's and Marshall Sahlin's work, including "Stone Age Economics" (Sahlins, 1972)

Here are some books that may help.

• Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, by Daniel C. Dennett. A philosopher and cognitive scientist examines the evolution from primitive consciousness, through a belief in ghosts, all the way to complex religions with their accompanying requirements and taboos.
  
• Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion, by Todd Tremlin. More brief and introductory (and less thorough), this book finds religion as a side-effect of the useful cognitive processes of empathy, risk aversion, and facial recognition.
  
• Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, by Pascal Boyer. A cognitive anthropologist argues that the thing we called "religion" is made up of a variety of unrelated cognitive patterns that evolved as distinct adaptations, and cannot be explained by a single, unified theory.
  

At least the aspect of total work hours has been debunked. Richard B. Lee eventually concluded that the !Kung work approx. 40 hours a week in a later publication (well, it's a book really).

http://www.amazon.com/Dobe-Kung-Studies-Cultural-Anthropology/dp/0030638038

Edit: though I don't know how relevant are the Kung since Sahlins was more focused on the Australian aborigines,

Really, the best source is the Tanakh, especially Leviticus, and to a lesser extent the Talmud as a commentary thereon. (The Talmud isn't as good a source because it mostly reflects what medieval Judaism did with the Tanakh, rather than how it was understood in ancient times.) There are a lot of rules about how people should behave, but the only ones that talk about a person coming to be in an improper state are the ones that deal with the concept of tumah.

http://www.religiousrules.com/Judaismpurity00table.htm has a good introduction to the ritual purity laws. For something in more depth, this book examines the distinction between ritual purity and morality, and its evolution across time.

The idea of being enduringly defiled by one's actions such that sacrifice is needed to restore it belongs solidly to the ritual side in Tanakhic material, whereas many modern forms of Christianity explicitly compare the death of Jesus with earlier animal sacrifices as atonement for moral sin. This is a development foreign to the practice of those who actually sacrificed animals at the Temple in Jerusalem, though Temple-era Judaism most certainly included the notion of a divinely-sanctioned moral code as well.

Check out The Human Potential for Peace by Douglas Fry. The bibliography should be a good start.

This is kind of half correct. Or half wrong depending on how you look at it. The Classic example is Napoleon Chagnon's description of the Yanomamo

Hunter Gatherer societies generally do have considerably more leisure and social/gender equality. It is important to understand while there is significantly more gender equality, that doesn't mean that there are not strict gender roles. The !Kung Live together peacefully, and equally without formal hierarchy. Violence is generally hit or miss.

Organised war? Sure it was more common after agriculture.

But tribal peoples skirmish constantly and raid each other like it's going out of fashion They have very high interpersonal violence rates.

War Before Civilization: The Myth of the Peaceful Savage

Easy to digest.

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Do you agree with William Easterly's theory that all international aid, including the Gates Foundation, is bad?