What is Anthropology?

What is Anthropology? #

• Study humans from comparative perspective (across time + space)
• Primarily interested in culture
  • our values/beliefs
    • learned
    • give meaning to our behavior
    • makes us unique as a species
    • one way humans adapt to new environments

“What does it mean to be human?” → Our distinctly complex development of culture

Four Field Discipline #

• Socio-cultural: compares living humans + cultures/politics
• Linguistics: evolution of language
• Archaeology: material remains of past/extinct populations (more recent = disaster archaeology)
• Biological: science of human life; evolution
  • Human biology: genetics, behavior, growth, physical/cultural adaptation
  • Primatology: non human living primates (closest to humans)
  • Paleoanthropology: evolution of anatomy/behavior
  • Skeletal biology: examining bones of past populations (aka bioarchaeology)