Anthropology Experiences Which Can Precede or Follow a Field Trip to the UNI Museum

1. Read about anthropologists and what they do.

2. Learn about the different fields of anthropology?

(Physical anthropology, social and cultural anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, and archaeology)

3. Learn about what the following terms mean to anthropologists?

(acculturation, adaptation, anatomy, art, artifact, culture, cultural relativism, cultural universals, culture trait, diffusion, enculturation, ethnicity, ethnocentrism, family, group, language, race, religion, rite, rite of passage, role, society, tool, tradition, trait)

4. Learn about where anthropologists live and work.

5. Learn about why is it important to understand our own culture and that of others.

6. Learn about how items in a museum are collected, cataloged, handled, and preserved.

7. Learn about a culture and its past and its present life situations.

8. Learn to understand the context in which artifacts were and are created.

9. Learn about materials that are available and what experiences the museum will provide.

Finish these sentences or answer these questions while at the UNI Museum.

• A physical anthropologist studies changes in bodies of humans and their relationships with other animals. A physical anthropologist who studied the North American Indians represented in the UNI Museum would have been interested in ____________________.

• A cultural anthropologist is concerned with cultural change. Changes take place within cultures and as one culture meets another. A cultural anthropologist who studied the North American Indians represented in the UNI Museum would have been interested in _______________________.

• Ethnography is the accurate description of living cultures. How would a teacher studying the North American Indians represented in the UNI Museum help children gain an accurate description of these people today?

• Ethnology is concerned with comparing and explaining similarities and differences in cultural systems. What similarities and differences do you see among two cultural systems represented in the museum?

• Linguistics is concerned with the description and analysis of languages. What do you know about the languages of the cultural groups represented in this museum?

• Archaeologists try to reconstruct the stories of people who have no written history. They dig up artifacts and obtain other cultural items. Which items and information in the museum may have been the contributions of archaeologists?

• Acculturation takes place when two cultures that are not alike spend a lot of time together. Find examples in the displays which show that two unlike cultures have affected each other and each has changed or acculturation has taken place.

• Adaptation involves changes in the behaviors of groups or individuals when they live in new or changed cultural surroundings. How has adaptation taken place in your life?

What evidence is there in museum displays that adaptation has taken place?

• Art involves the production or arrangement of movements, shapes, colors, sounds or other things to create beauty. Find one piece of art in the museum and try to think of its creation in the original context of the society which made it. What meaning do you think it had to that culture?

How does your own cultural perspective affect the meaning of the original artist?

• An artifact is an object produced by a human. Find one artifact from a North American Indian culture. What does the label tell you about its original purpose?

• The culture in which you were raised gave you ways to behave, beliefs, works of art, things people have produced, institutions, and ways of thinking which are common to a number of people. Find symbols of your culture in what you or others are wearing. How are these symbols like or different from some of the symbols you see in the museum?

• Cultural relativism means that we only fully understand someone's behavior when we see it through the "eyes" of that culture. Find an example of something in the museum which seems "strange" to you. Think of that item in relation to the culture which created it.

How does it look through your "eyes"?

What beliefs or ways of thinking might make it look different through the "eyes" of someone from the culture which created the item?

• Traits are distinguishing features. What distinguishing character traits do people of your culture have?

• Diffusion takes place when traits of one culture area spread to another. What cultural traits have you gained from other cultures?

Can you find examples of where diffusion has taken place in things you see in the museum?

• Enculturation is that process which enabled you to participate in your culture. What type of enculturation took place in a North American Indian society represented in the museum?

How could students learn about this process?

• Ethnicity is the condition of belonging to your ethnic group. What ethnic group(s) are part of your heritage?

Who has helped you develop "ethnic pride" in your heritage?

• Ethnocentrism means that a person or group thinks its culture is superior to that of others. Find examples of ethnocentrism in your cultural group.

• Family or relatives shape one's life. How has your family been shaped by the culture and how has your family made you what you are?

• A number of individuals is called a group. You are part of many groups in a culture. What are these groups and what characteristics do these groups have?

• You make various sounds which are meaningful to you and others around you. In what ways has your own culture and other cultures affected your language or the sounds you make?

• Certain genetically transmitted physical characteristics have determined your race. In what geographic area did this race or combination of races develop? What has affected the bringing together of your individual, unique genetic physical characteristics over the last 200 years?

• Your expression of belief in or reverence for a creator or ruler of the universe is part of your culture. It is your religion. What items in the museum reflect religious beliefs?

• A rite or prescribed form for a religious ceremony may be part of your life. What rites are evident in the cultural displays of the museum?

• A rite of passage is used when an important change takes place in a person's life. What items in the museum might have been used in a rite of passage at birth, puberty, marriage or death?

• You know what social behavior is expected of you or you know your role. What items in the museum help people perform a particular role or help others know or understand the role?

• People who have common interests, participate in related events, share institutions, and have a common culture may be thought of as part of a particular society.

Finish these sentences.

Our society _____________________________.

It is good that our society ____________________.

Find Items in the Museum

• An instrument, machine, or something that helps us do something is known as a tool. Find one tool in the museum and think of how or why people have kept it the same or changed it.

• A social custom, belief, or behavior pattern that has been part of your culture for a long time is a tradition. What artifacts in the museum helped people keep traditions in their societies?

Civilization

Each cultural group has characteristic ways of living. The Iowa environment helped create distinct cultural groups and changed others who came to it. The state of art, science, and other factors related to living in Iowa has enhanced, defined, and refined the lives of Iowans. Study of national, territorial, and state government, the Homestead Act and its impact on settlement, and museum artifacts from representative eras can enhance the understanding of the progress and decline of civilization.