The Last Five

1. There are four fields in anthropology: cultural, physical, linguistics, and archaeological. Cultural anthropology is the study of human society and culture, the subfield that describes, analyzes, and explains social and cultural similarities and differences. Cultural anthropology attempts to look at humans via their culture. Cultural anthropologists engage in two kinds of activity: ethnography, which is based on field work, and ethnology, based on cross-cultural comparison. Archaeological anthropology reconstructs, describes, and interprets human behavior and cultural patterns through material remains. At sites where people live or have lived, archaeologists find artifacts such as tools, weapons and camp sites. Analyzing such data allows archaeologists to answer questions about ancient economies. Physical anthropology is human biological diversity in time and space. Physical anthropologists reconstruct biological and cultural aspects of human evolution. They study artifacts like archaeologists to uncover answers about the habits, customs, and lifestyles of the ancestral humans who used them. Linguistic anthropology is the study of the origins and development of language. Applied anthropology is a new field of anthropology. It is where we get to apply anthropology theories and knowledge to the real life situation. More anthropologists from the four main fields now work in such “applied” areas such as public health, family planning, business, and economic development.

2. Culture is the way of life of a particular people. This includes their religion, language, art, politics, marriage and many other things. Traditions and customs form and guide the beliefs and behavior of the people exposed to them. A culture produces a degree of consistency in behavior and thoughts among the people who live in a particular society. The most critical element of cultural traditions is their transmission through learning rather than biological inheritance....