Listen to part of a talk in an anthropology class. The class has been talking about the cultures of north America's native peoples.
Before we continue, you should understand an important concept. That is the notion of a culture area. A culture area is not a colony of artist but the geographical area inhabited by different peoples with similar cultures. A culture area is relatively consistent in term of land features. For instance, the land is completely mountains or flat and the climate. There are similarities in the kind of plants and animals and settlers. I take what I call a bottom-up approach to study of the culture. That does not mean that I go to those sites or people are digging for artifact but rather it means that I think of culture as something it grows out of the daily needs of people's life, like finding food, or protecting themselves against weather. The routines and social order the people create in order to deal with these things form the culture. So Inuit peoples lived in what's now Alaska. People whose surrounding are cold and not fit for agriculture and who depend on fishing. You can image how their routines differ from Anasazi people who lived in warm desert region. So if that is clear to everyone, we can continue. So moving on. Anthropologists feel that in what is now the United States and Canada, there are 9 culture areas. We examine all of them in the next few weeks but for now let's start with our own area.