ANTHROPOLOGY’S FOUR FIELDS4

What Is Anthropology?Anthropology is the scientific study of what it means to be human

What Is Anthropology?As a scholarly discipline, anthropology straddles the sciences, social studies and humanities.

What Is Anthropology?What makes anthropology unique is its holistic approach: the notion that hard sciences, social sciences and humanities can all speak to one another within the same disciplinary tradition.

Anthropology recognizes that almost all

phenomena “are simultaneously real, like

nature, narrated, like discourse, and collective,

like society.”

The Four Fields

Human Characteristic Anthropological Subfield

Humans shape their material environment

Archaeology

Humans differ in their physical form Physical/Biological Anthropology

Humans have a unique communication system

Linguistic Anthropology

Humans act according to learned knowledge systems

Cultural Anthropology

What makes human beings unique?

Archaeology

Studies the ways humans manipulate their material environment

Examines material environment of past societies for clues about their lives

Physical Anthropology

Examines the ways humans are biologically similar to and different from other animals

Primatology Human Evolution

Linguistic Anthropology

How humans use language to communicate

The spread and transformation of language

Language acquisition Language revitalization

Cultural Anthropology

Describes and analyzes the beliefs people have about their social and material worlds, and the ways these affect human action

Interdisciplinarity & Holism

Cultural

Physical

Linguistic

Archaeology