I had to look up what anthrolopogy actually is.
Not that I haven’t heard the word before but I never spent much time thinking about it. So the wikipedia entry still leaves me with a more or less vague impression.
I have a few vague guesses what you might be looking for.
I feel what you are looking for is something I call emergent gameplay where things happen during the playing of the game that are not expressed in the rules of the game.
The first few games that come to my mind are some of the (around here) usual suspects. I have recently played some games that gave me a personal insight into “how humans work”
- Blood on the Clocktower (thanks forums), where I learned how it feels to be lying without remorse and how easily people believe those lies. Blood on the Clocktower is a much more elaborate version of the well-known Werewolf formula. You can find the threads for the forum games here and here. Obviously this needs quite a few people to play and currently can only be pre-ordered. But maybe other social deduction/hidden role games can fulfill a similar role.
- Pax Pamir 2nd (Cole Wehrle is the designer) where one plays the role of Afghan tribal leaders who have to decide which of the big factions they want to be loyal to to survive the “Great Game” of the 19th century. It is a complex game, not easily obtained (the KS for John Company alonside which it can be preordered runs another 24h). Secondary market copies run expensive. Beware 1st edition. Playing this game evokes a sense of political maneuvering that I have not experienced with other games. While I am at it John Company is supposed to evoke what I short-hand to the “banality of evil” where small decisions by normal people who are just cogs in the big machine of the empire amount to something bigger that is entirely bad. I have not played this game, this is what the designer hopes to achieve.
What could be of interest are largely asymmetrical games where each player has quite different motivations, unique abilities and possibly unique goals for winning which makes me want to add two more of Cole Wehrle’s games to my list: Root and Oath.
I second this one. While I am at it. Auction games may be of interest as they also create something that cannot be grasped only by the rules. The markets and values are fleeting and unique to each game.
edit: review of John Company by someone much more adept than myself at dissecting games.