So, you're taking an anthropology course. Which means you're probably wondering what you've gotten yourself into. Well, this short video will give you a very basic view of anthropology, and how it is divided into four distinct, though interwoven, subfields. Simply put, anthropology is the study of humans. The term anthropology comes from two roots, anthropos meaning man or human, and logos meaning the study of.
Anthropology is traditionally subdivided into four subfields. Cultural, biological, linguistic, and archaeology. Cultural anthropology is the study of the cultural basis of humanity.
Similar to sociology, but looking at all cultures around the world and bringing in a historical context. Cultural anthropology is well known due to the media. National Geographic, among others, provides a view of the cultural anthropologist as a westerner. from Europe or the U.S. who travels to a remote culture to study exotic people. Well, while this is occasionally true, current cultural anthropologists do just as much research within their own culture, studying particular subcultures of Americans or Europeans, as well as studying those isolated non-Western societies.
The second subfield is biological or physical anthropology. The focus of this subfield is on human anatomy, as well as genetics, the biological relatives of humans, monkeys, apes, as well as human ancestors like Neanderthals and Australopithecines. Biological anthropologists study how genetics make us look the way we do or how we can identify who someone is when all we have is their skeletal remains.
They also study the behavior and physical makeup of primates. which helps us to understand how humans have evolved, how our ancestors may have behaved, as well as how they looked. Biological anthropologists who study in paleoanthropology study the ancient remains of primates, both those that are within our ancestral line and those who are not on our line, our cousins, if you will. Many of these give us a really good understanding of why we are the way we are today.
Linguistic anthropology is the study of language usage, particularly in terms of culture, looking at how language changes and adapts, and how language is used differently in different settings by different individuals. Linguistic anthropology also addresses the basic structure of languages and usages that language have in different cultures. They also study language similarities and differences in order to look at human migrations around the world.
The last main subfield is archaeology. Archaeologists study past human cultures. So in a lot of ways, they're kind of like cultural anthropologists of the past.
They do this by excavating the remains that are left behind, interpreting the artifacts and features in order to deduce these cultural behaviors of cultures that are now extinct. Now there is actually one more subfield that crosscuts the four main or traditional subfields. This is called applied anthropology and applied anthropology is basically the use of anthropological practices methods in the everyday world in business, healthcare, design, marketing, etc.
The most commonly applied anthropology is cultural But all four subfields can be applied in different ways. Physical anthropology is applied in the design of cars, seats, as well as things like baby food. Forensic anthropology is applied in anthropology.
Archaeological applications include things like when a shopping mall is built, how individuals have to go out and excavate. and make sure that there aren't any Native American remains where that new development is going to be made. So there's many different ways that anthropology can be applied. I hope this has given you a good view of what anthropology is in a nutshell, and I look forward to you learning more about it.