Anthropology MCQ Multiple Choice Questions Answers - Page 2 for Practice
31. What term refers to an insider's perspective on their own culture, utilizing the concepts, categories, and meanings meaningful to community members?
Correct Answer is: Emic perspective
Solution:
An emic perspective seeks to understand social life using local concepts and internal cultural meanings, as opposed to an external, observer-based (etic) framework.
32. Which small-bodied hominin species, nicknamed the 'Hobbit', was discovered on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003?
Correct Answer is: Homo floresiensis
Solution:
Homo floresiensis was a dwarfed hominin species standing about 1.1 meters tall that inhabited Flores, Indonesia until relatively recently.
33. What cultural rule or requirement dictates that an individual must choose a marriage partner from outside their own defined social group or lineage?
Correct Answer is: Exogamy
Solution:
Exogamy obligates members of a society to marry outside of their specific kinship group, clan, or community.
34. Who is often considered the 'father of American anthropology' for establishing the four-field approach and promoting cultural relativism?
Correct Answer is: Franz Boas
Solution:
Franz Boas pioneered American anthropology, rejecting scientific racism and developing the four-field model (cultural, biological, linguistic, archaeology).
35. In biological anthropology, which subfield examines human skeletal remains from archaeological contexts to reconstruct past human health, demographic patterns, and life histories?
Correct Answer is: Bioarchaeology
Solution:
Bioarchaeology combines biological anthropology and archaeology to analyze skeletal remains for insights into historical health, diet, and lifestyle patterns.
36. What form of marriage allows a woman to be married to two or more husbands at the same time?
Correct Answer is: Polyandry
Solution:
Polyandry is a form of polygamy where a woman is married to multiple husbands simultaneously. It is traditionally practiced in parts of the Himalayas, such as Tibet.
37. Which anthropologist developed structural functionalism, proposing that social institutions exist primarily to maintain the stability and cohesion of society?
Correct Answer is: A.R. Radcliffe-Brown
Solution:
A.R. Radcliffe-Brown developed structural functionalism, viewing social structures as systems of interconnected institutions that function together to preserve social solidarity.
38. Which subfield of biological anthropology applies skeletal analysis and physical evidence to legal contexts to assist in identifying human remains?
Correct Answer is: Forensic anthropology
Solution:
Forensic anthropology utilizes osteological and biological anthropology methods in legal and medico-legal investigations to identify deceased individuals and analyze trauma.
39. In linguistic anthropology, what term refers to a simplified contact language that develops spontaneously between groups that do not share a common language?
Correct Answer is: Pidgin
Solution:
A pidgin is a grammatically simplified, makeshift language created for basic communication, typically for trade, between groups with distinct native languages.
40. Which early hominin fossil, discovered in Chad in 2001 and dated to approximately 6 to 7 million years ago, is among the oldest known hominin species?
Correct Answer is: Sahelanthropus tchadensis
Solution:
Sahelanthropus tchadensis, nicknamed 'Toumaï', was discovered in Chad and dates back about 6 to 7 million years, placing it near the human-chimpanzee divergence.
41. What evolutionary concept describes non-random mating in which individuals select partners with similar physical or genetic traits more frequently than expected by chance?
Correct Answer is: Assortative mating
Solution:
Assortative mating is a form of non-random mating where individuals choose mates based on shared phenotypic or genotypic characteristics, affecting population genotype frequencies.
42. Which French sociologist and anthropologist authored the classic 1925 essay 'The Gift', exploring total social facts and systemic exchange obligations?
Correct Answer is: Marcel Mauss
Solution:
Marcel Mauss authored 'The Gift', demonstrating that gift economies are governed by reciprocal social obligations to give, receive, and repay.
43. What anthropological term refers to an outsider's analytical perspective, using universal scientific categories and theories to examine a culture?
Correct Answer is: Etic perspective
Solution:
An etic perspective uses external, cross-cultural, and objective scientific concepts to observe and interpret cultural practices from a researcher's standpoint.
44. Which key concept, popularized by sociologist and anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu, refers to deeply ingrained, embodied habits and dispositions shaped by social environment?
Correct Answer is: Habitus
Solution:
Habitus describes the set of socially acquired, durable dispositions and habits that guide individual perception, thought, and action within social structures.
45. Which field methodology, popularized by Bronisław Malinowski, involves long-term immersion in a community's daily activities?
Correct Answer is: Participant observation
Solution:
Participant observation requires ethnographers to live within a community, observing and participating in daily routines to understand cultural life from within.
46. Which archaic human population, identified primarily through ancient DNA extracted from fossil fragments found in Siberia, interbred with ancient Homo sapiens in Asia?
Correct Answer is: Denisovans
Solution:
Denisovans were an extinct lineage of hominins identified via genomic sequencing from Denisova Cave in Russia, whose DNA persists in modern Asian and Oceanian populations.
47. Which stone tool technology, characterized by teardrop-shaped bifacial handaxes, is primarily associated with Lower Paleolithic hominins like Homo erectus?
Correct Answer is: Acheulean
Solution:
The Acheulean tool tradition featured carefully flaked bifacial handaxes and cleavers, utilized extensively by Homo erectus across Africa and Eurasia.
48. Which American anthropologist pioneered Cultural Materialism, arguing that material conditions such as ecology and technology dictate social structure and ideology?
Correct Answer is: Marvin Harris
Solution:
Marvin Harris formulated Cultural Materialism, proposing that infrastructure (resource availability, technology, and population dynamics) primarily shapes social and cultural systems.
49. Which post-marital residence pattern occurs when a newly married couple establishes an independent household apart from both spouses' families?
Correct Answer is: Neolocal residence
Solution:
Neolocal residence occurs when a married couple creates a brand-new, self-contained residence separate from both the bride's and groom's biological families.
50. Which field technique in physical anthropology involves taking standardized physical measurements of the human body to study variation, growth, and development?
Correct Answer is: Anthropometry
Solution:
Anthropometry is the systematic measurement of human physical dimensions, such as height, weight, and skull proportions, to assess biological diversity and nutrition.
51. In economic anthropology, what mode of distribution involves pooling resources at a central authority, which subsequently redistributes them throughout the society?
Correct Answer is: Redistribution
Solution:
Redistribution is an exchange system where goods or services are gathered into a central repository and then allocated among community members by a central authority.
52. Which early scholar famously defined culture in 1871 as 'that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man'?
Correct Answer is: Edward Burnett Tylor
Solution:
Sir Edward Burnett Tylor provided this classic, foundational definition of culture in his 1871 work 'Primitive Culture', marking a major milestone in academic anthropology.
53. What evolutionary mechanism occurs when a small group breaks off from a larger population to colonize a new area, resulting in reduced genetic diversity in the new population?
Correct Answer is: Founder effect
Solution:
The founder effect is a form of genetic drift that occurs when a small group separates from a larger population, carrying only a fraction of the original genetic variation.
54. What term describes a stable, fully developed language that originated from a pidgin once it was adopted by a new generation of children as their native language?
Correct Answer is: Creole
Solution:
A creole language forms when a pidgin is learned as a native tongue by children, expanding its syntax, vocabulary, and structural complexity into a complete natural language.
55. Which pioneering family of paleoanthropologists made famous long-term discoveries at Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge, including the discovery of Homo habilis?
Correct Answer is: Leakey family
Solution:
Louis and Mary Leakey (and later Richard and Meave Leakey) conducted decades of research in Olduvai Gorge, discovering key hominin fossils such as Homo habilis.
56. What term describes the practice of judging another culture solely by the values and standards of one's own culture?
Correct Answer is: Ethnocentrism
Solution:
Ethnocentrism is the tendency to view one's own culture as superior and to evaluate other cultures against one's own cultural norms.
57. In kinship analysis, what term designates a cousin who is the child of a parent's same-sex sibling (such as a mother's sister's child or father's brother's child)?
Correct Answer is: Parallel cousin
Solution:
Parallel cousins are children of ego's parent's same-sex siblings, whereas cross cousins are children of a parent's opposite-sex siblings (mother's brother's or father's sister's children).
58. Which system of descent traces familial lineage through both the mother's and father's sides equally?
Correct Answer is: Bilateral descent
Solution:
Bilateral descent connects individuals equally to relatives through both maternal and paternal lines, typical in many modern industrialized societies.
59. Which primatologist conducted groundbreaking, multi-decade field research on wild chimpanzees in Gombe Stream National Park, Tanzania?
Correct Answer is: Jane Goodall
Solution:
Jane Goodall revolutionized primatology starting in 1960 by observing wild chimpanzee behavior, including tool making and complex social structures.
60. Which scholar introduced the concept of 'rites of passage' in 1909 to describe social rituals marking status transitions?
Correct Answer is: Arnold van Gennep
Solution:
Arnold van Gennep identified a universal structure in life-transition rituals consisting of separation, liminality, and reincorporation.
