Four fields of anthropology, what are they? Okay, four fields of anthropology. They are cultural, biological, linguistics, and archaeology.
So... Step one, and this is in no particular order, so you don't have to number them one, two, three, and four or anything like that. Cultural anthropology.
Cultural anthropology is the granddaddy of the anthropological world. It's kind of the cliche. It's the one that you think of.
somebody just says, I'm an anthropologist, you probably think of someone who's working out in the jungle or in the desert and they're watching a culture, looking at them and writing things down and recording them and asking questions. Christians, right? That is cultural anthropology.
Cultural anthropology is simply the study of living people. That's it. It's that simple. And if you do cultural anthropology, what you're going to end up with is an ethnography.
What's an ethnography? An ethnography is simply a book. And each chapter is going to have themes that you might think. One chapter will be on their religion. One chapter will be on how they dress.
One chapter will be on the food they eat. One chapter will be on how their social system is organized, this kind of thing. So if you're a cultural anthropologist, what you're doing is you are studying a culture, ultimately writing a book to tell others what it's like. Now, you don't have to do something romantic and exciting and a bit cliche, like working out in the middle of the desert or in the jungle or something like this. A cultural anthropologist could work in a huge hospital.
They could study the culture of that hospital. same idea applies so at the end of the day cultural anthropology study of living cultures now number two biological anthropology and i should say biological slash physical anthropology it's all the same thing don't freak out if your book says physical and your class says biological it's all the same stuff the idea is i like to say biological anthropology is the study of the human animal the reason i say that biological anthro is the most sciency of the the four fields. Meaning, you get a science credit when you take bioanthro.
You don't get it for any of the others. And that's fair. Why? It's because we use the scientific method maybe a bit more in biological anthropology. Biological anthropology has three things about it, right?
Three kind of focus points. Point number one, you're going to learn a lot about genetics and evolution. That's kind of like the first six weeks, right? Very scientific.
A real reason for getting a science credit. Part number two, you're going to learn about the... primates, which are our closest living relatives. Number three, you're going to learn about the human fossil record and recent human evolution.
So those three aspects give you biological anthropology. Fun fact, if you are into forensics, right? You're watching CSI, forensic anthropology, kind of how the bullet goes through the body.
A forensic anthropologist starts at biological anthropology and they go from there, right? So that's bioanthro. Number three, linguistics. The study of...
language! You know this. It's the easiest, most straightforward one I would say of the four fields in terms of its definition. It's classically the smallest of the four fields, but it just simply focuses on how language has evolved and changed over time. how different languages relate to each other, the actual construction of language itself, not just nouns and verbs, but crazy stuff like phonemes and allomorphs and allophones and this kind of thing.
If you think about it, isn't language odd? interesting and important. Like these sounds that I'm making right now.
They're going through this device and you're listening to them and they're making word pictures in your head. Word pictures and themes and you know what I'm saying. Just by me making sounds that are vibrating through the air and going into your head and they're making meaning.
Your brain is making meaning out of these sounds. It's an amazing thing. Think how much information I'm getting to you this quick.
Nothing beats it. Language is a very important part in human evolution in general. So linguistics is a big deal. Field number four.
The final field. Your friend and mine, the reason you're here, archaeology, right? Study of the dead.
Study of dead cultures, study of the past. So what I find actually in studying archaeology, it's very similar to cultural anthropology. anthropology. These two fields of anthro share a lot because we're looking at the same stuff.
We're looking at how the culture is organized. We're looking at questions like what did they eat? Where did they live?
What did they do? What was their religion like? But Cultural anthropologists got it easy because they got living people.
I got it hard because I got dead people. The interview on the cultural anthropo world is a lot easier to do.