Customer Reviews

Lab Manual and Workbook for Physical Anthropology

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

I've used this manual for my physical anthropology classes since the 3rd edition, and there has been some improvement. It's the only game in town as far as lab manuals go, although the students also like Kappelman's VIRTUAL LABORATORIES cd-rom.

There's an instructor's manual available for printout from the publisher, but the key has some WRONG answers, which is annoying when one is swamped or has a student assistant grading who may not realize that the key is wrong. For example, the solution to the ABO blood group frequencies in exercise 1.6.3b is wrong and there are some weird stats in exercise 11.2's key, but that might be my mistake.

Some of the info is arcane, and refers to information that is not available in the prefatory chapter in the manual or in most phys anth texts. Specifically, why is it important to know about cingula?

The exercises are a bit redundant and over-long, but that's what the students have told me -- I actually like the way that France has the students build the answers to the problems in stages, going from simple to complex. The pictures in the 5th edition ARE better, but the mechanics of doing the exercises w/pictures can get crazy sometimes, what with flipping back to see this figure or that. Some exercises refer to figures several chapters back, and are a little hard to find.

I know that I will keep using this manual. It's good for undergraduate through graduate students, it represents a huge amount of work on France's part (which I appreciate!) and it's the only game in town.

*** this review refers to the latest, 5th edition.

My professor has chosen to use this lab book for her "Introductory Biological Anthropology" course. On average, my classmates and I spend around four or five hours hunting for answers hidden within. The common theory we have is that somewhere there is a textbook that might accompany it. The diagrams are not very helpful - tiny black and white pictures that we are supposed to compare in size, shape, etc. The questions are very vague - before I started to type this review, I was using google to try to find some sort of answers for my lab before meeting with almost half of my class to go over what we've each individually found. At the end of term, I am definately having a book burning party for this manual!

I use this manual to teach an introductory lab in physical anthropology. The third edition is a small improvement over the second. For beginning students, the photographs and diagrams are not clear enough to teach from and must be supplemented from other sources. Most of the practice problems are fairly good but the book lacks an appendix of answers or an accompanying instructor's manual leaving the instructor to guess at the intent of the authors for some of the more obscure examples. However, considering the dearth of good lab manuals for physical anthropology this is not the worst.

The review quoted here refers to a VERY old edition. The new 5th edition is out now, so please review THAT edition for possible use. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Really wish it would have been made clear that there were 13 exercises missing from the book. Severely irritated that I now have to photocopy from another student. Workbooks such as this should not be resold unless they are complete.

Ms. France needs to update this manual. Many of the exercises require outside sources or the internet. She does a very poor job in providing sufficient information on the forensic anthropology chapter (i.e., mechanisms of blunt force trauma). I was completely
disappointed with the manual and do not believe this is worth the money.

What I found confusing were the skeletons. In my class we had to know which sides the bones were from. It could have been explained better how to tell the front from the back and which sides the bones were from. I liked the tone of the book and the author seemed like she wanted people to be interested and inspired by anthropology. I would have liked vocabulary, like distal, posterior etc to be explained and shown more clearly.

Needed it for my Physical Anthropology class, pretty good but diagrams too small, but otherwise pretty good.

As a teaching assistant using the new edition of the lab manual, my students and I continualy ran into problems with this addition. Not only is it full of typos (eg. labeling A. africanus as A. robustus), but it is also confusing in the types of questions asked. Plus, the chapters themselves are arranged differently and lack in detail.

What can I say about this seller? Why would he put an item up for sale if he didn't have it, or didn't intend on sending it? Was he just in it for the money? Is he a drug fiend? I don't know.

Whatever the reason for his thievery (and thievery it was, to the tune of $26.49!), the item was never received. It was never sent. It may have never even existed.

There is a special place in Hell reserved for sellers like this that screw the customer over, making them wait 3 weeks to file a claim that will take a further 2 weeks to clear.

jeng_54, I hope you burn for this.