Glossary
Anthropology Professor Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential anthropology professor terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key anthropology professor vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in anthropology professor training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- Adjunct
- Part-time instructor.
- Artifact
- Object made by people.
- Cultural relativism
- Understanding cultures on their own terms.
- Ethnography
- In-depth study of a culture.
- Excavation
- Digging a site.
- Field school
- Hands-on field course.
- IRB
- Human research ethics board.
- Kinship
- Family relationships.
- Office hours
- Time set aside for students.
- Participant observation
- Learning by joining daily life.
- Peer review
- Expert review of research.
- Sabbatical
- Paid leave for research.
- Stratigraphy
- Layers at a site.
- Syllabus
- Course plan.
- Tenure
- Permanent faculty status.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Anthropology Professor practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Anthropology Professor training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.