Gift Giving Guide 10

Twice a year every year I dedicate a blog post to something a little different and fun: gifts for the anthropologist.  I attempt to highlight handmade and/or fair trade items as these most closely mirror the values of anthropology in cultural understanding and preservation.  If you happen to know an anthropologist, someone with interests in anthropology, or someone who shares these same values feel free to look into one of these amazing gifts this holiday season:

Cultural Anthropology

Do you know an anthropologist who has political interests and/or activism at heart?  If so they may be following in the foot steps of pioneering anthropologist, Zora Neale Hurston, whose work on folklore, African American cultures, and activism are well known within the field.  This pillow might just be the perfect gift for that special anthropologist.  Available through DontSleepInteriors on Etsy.

Archaeology

If you know someone who is either pursuing a career in or has an interest in archaeology this watch might be the perfect gift.  It tells the time while also demonstrating the first step of the excavation process.  Available through SunnyRiverCreations on Etsy.

Linguistic Anthropology
 

Many find attempting to find the perfect gift for the linguistic anthropologist to be quite difficult, but this magnificent find might just be the best idea ever!  This unisex t-shirt plays with language as well as phonetics, making it a versatile gift for linguists in specific languages as well as in anthropology.  Even greater it comes in multiple colors, allowing you to customize this piece for your gift receiver.  Available through StagandPeachCo on Etsy.

Biological Anthropology

I always like to save the best anthropological subfield for last (yes, I might be a tad biased).  As biological anthropology is the most diverse of the four subfields a gift that is applicable to any individual in the field is probably your best bet, but that can be rather difficult to do since there are so many types of biological anthropologists.  This gift, however, might meet the expectations of all (or at least most) of those different anthropologists: a chimpanzee skeleton model.  Chimpanzees are a primate widely studied by primatologists, the skeleton is studied by bioarchaeologists, and paleoanthropologists will get practice putting the model together (much like what they do out in the field).  Therefore this gift may be the safest bet for a biological anthropologist (particularly if you are not sure what they are focusing on).  Available through Tinysaurs.

Spotlight on Students: Social Ramifications of Lip Stretching

The following is a post written by a student, Tiffany Creer.  This post highlights her work that she completed as part of her requirements in Ant 411: Culture Areas of the World.  Students have the opportunity to explore material through their own research.  Please show your appreciation for her work through the comments.

Suri woman with lip plate (Source: Pic Fair)

By: Tiffany Creer
 

My curiosity question for this week’s reading comes from watching the videos of the Suri women stretching their lips so that they would be married and families would receive cattle / marriage price. How is lip stretching seen among other tribes like the Suri? Are there any repercussions if women do not stretch their lips?  

In doing my research I’ve learned some interesting information about another tribe called the Mursi that also partakes in women lip stretching but the reason and how it is seen is a little different from the Suri tribe. The Mursi tribe does stretch women lips for marriage but a big difference is that the Mursi tribe is that they partake in arranged marriages that also have a prearranged marriage price even before the women starts to stretch her lip. “When seen in the light the lip-plate worn by Mursi women is an expression of female social adulthood and reproductive potential. Another tribe called the Kayapo is also different from the Suri and Mursi tribe because they men stretch their lips which are extremely rare in most African cultures. “ The lip-plate worn by a Kayapo man, which marks his fully adult status, but also to the penis sheath that is ‘bestowed’ on a Kayapo boy at puberty and which ‘symbolizes’ the collective appropriation of male powers of sexual reproduction for purposes of social reproduction (Turton 2004).”  Aside from lip stretching being a cultural practice that had lasted many of years throughout history it is clear that across tribes the lip plate has a similar meaning of fertility and readiness to marry just with different variations of specific details attached. 

To be a woman and not have your lip stretched plays and important part on how you can be perceived.  “The lip-plate is a powerful visual marker of Mursi identity. For a Mursi woman, not to have a pierced lip is to run the risk of being mistaken for a Kwegu, a client group of hunters who live along the banks of the Omo, while to have a pierced but not stretched lip is to run the risk of being mistaken for a Bodi, northern neighbors of the Mursi, with whom they are frequently at war (Bodi women insert small plugs in their lower lips) (Turton 2004)”. This means that aside from stretching your lip for marriage it is seen as a type of cultural identity marker in these tribes that can play a big part in survival as well as marriage and acceptance.

                                                   Work Cited

Turton, D. (2004). Lip-plates and the people who take photographs: Uneasy encounters between Mursi and tourists in southern Ethiopia. Anthropology Today, 20(3), 3-8. doi:10.1111/j.          0268-540x.2004.00266.x