What Is Anthropology? How Is It Done?

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What Is Anthropology? How Is It Done?

People enter the field of anthropology for a variety of reasons. Some people enter the field by accident. This means that they did not intend on becoming an anthropologist. Some people were interested in the field from the start. One person married a social anthropologist; and, after living with a group of people for two years wrote an ethnography about the people.

The first story is about Adrienne Zihlman. She is a paleoanthropologist. She collects all kinds of bones; so, she can "contrive and test ideas about the origins of humans by studying the remains of living things" (Shell 1991:37). Zihlman went to Miami University of Ohio, where she decided to major in anthropology after reading Margaret Mead's book, "Coming of Age in Samoa" (Shell 1991:38). Since Miami University didn't have an anthropology department, she transferred to the University of Colorado (Shell 1991:38). After graduating in 1962, she went to do graduate work at Berkeley (Shell 1991:38). This is where she decided to focus herself on finding out how our ancestors began to walk (Shell 1991:38).

Zihlman has ideas about how we came to be that are contradictory to what most people believe (Shell 1991:37). Zihlman says that tasks completed by females, like food gathering and infant care, were as equally likely as hunting by males, to have been the cause for bipedalism and social relationships (Shell 1991:37­38). When she started her doctoral research, she had the belief that two­legged walking came to be to allow more efficient movement on long hunting trips (Shell 1991:38). Zihlman completed her thesis in 1967 and started thinking that there was something wrong with the male dominated theories about the past (S...

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...rchaeology", Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 1., Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996, Pgs. 74.

Durrenberger, E. Paul, "Ethnography", Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 2, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996, Pgs. 416­419.

Fernea, Elizabeth Warnock, Guests of the Sheik, Doubleday, New York, 1965, Pgs. ix­5.

Lee, Richard B., The Dobe Ju/'hoansi, Harcourt Brace College Publishers, Philadelphia, 1993, Pgs. iii & 2.

Reimer, Toni­Tripp, "Nursing", Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 3, Henry Holt & Company, New York, 1996, Pgs. 877,879­880).

Rosenthal, Elisabeth, "The Forgotten Female", Discover, December 1991, Pgs.23­27.

Shell, Ellen Ruppel, "Flesh & Bone", Discover, December 1991, Pgs. 37­42.

Winick, Charles, Dictionary of Anthropology, Philosophical Library, New York, 1956, Pgs.398,436.

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