Anthropologists study people and primates (such as chimps), researching their cultural, physical, and social development over time. Archaeologists investigate history by finding and studying the remains and objects a society leaves behind.

They compare populations of nonhuman primates, extinct human ancestors, and modern humans. This type of study may shed light on human culture, communication, society, and behavior. Many biological anthropologists explore the relationship among genes, behavior, and environment.

Paleoanthropology or paleo-anthropology is a branch of paleontology and anthropology which seeks to understand the early development of anatomically modern humans, a process known as hominization, through the reconstruction of evolutionary kinship lines within the family Hominidae, working from biological evidence ( …

Physical or biological anthropology deals with the evolution of humans, their variability, and adaptations to environmental stresses. Forensic anthropologists use the study of skeletal biology to assist in the identification and analysis of more recently deceased individuals.

Some of the more common types of anthropological research methods include (1) immersion in a culture, (2) analysis of how people interact with their environment, (3) linguistic analysis, (4) archaeological analysis, and (5) analysis of human biology.

Anthropologists specialize in cultural or social anthropology, linguistic anthropology, biological or physical anthropology, and archaeology. While subdisciplines can overlap and are not always seen by scholars as distinct, each tends to use different techniques and methods.

Archaeology examines peoples and cultures of the past. Biological anthropology specializes in evolution, genetics, and health. Cultural anthropology studies human societies and elements of cultural life. Linguistic anthropology is a concentration of cultural anthropology that focuses on language in society.

Franz Boas

The Four Subfields

• Archaeology. Archaeologists study human culture by analyzing the objects people have made.
• Biological Anthropology.
• Cultural Anthropology.
• Linguistic Anthropology.

Social Anthropology includes various sub-disciplines like medical anthropology, psychological anthropology, social institutions, kinship, family and marriage, visual anthropology, theories in social anthropology, fieldwork methodology, ethnography, ethnology, museology, etc.

Characteristics of anthropology

• Holistic. Anthropology seeks to explore every facet of an issue or topic, making it inherently interdisciplinary.
• A global perspective.
• Evolutionary.
• Study of culture.
• Biocultural.
• Fieldwork.
• A natural science, a social science and one of the humanities.
• Respect for human diversity.

Anthropologists score highly on openness, which means they are usually curious, imaginative, and value variety. They also tend to be high on the measure of conscientiousness, which means that they are methodical, reliable, and generally plan out things in advance.

One reason that anthropology remains a broad, four-field discipline, rather than splitting up, is that all anthropologists recognize the importance of the following concepts: culture, cultural relativism, diversity, change, and holism.

The key anthropological perspectives are holism, relativism, comparison, and fieldwork. There are also both scientific and humanistic tendencies within the discipline that, at times, conflict with one another.

Anthropology is the systematic study of humanity, with the goal of understanding our evolutionary origins, our distinctiveness as a species, and the great diversity in our forms of social existence across the world and through time.

In anthropology holism tries to integrate all that is known about human beings and their activities. From a holistic perspective, attempts to divide reality into mind and matter isolate and pin down certain aspects of a process that, by very nature, resists isolation and dissection.

In anthropology the self came to be understood as a process that orchestrates an individual’s personal experience following which s/he becomes self-aware and self-reflective about her or his place in society (Taylor, 1989).

Some Famous Anthropologists

• Franz Boas (1858 – 1942)
• Bronislaw Malinowski (1884 – 1942)
• Margaret Mead (1901 – 1978)
• Ruth Benedict (1877 – 1948)
• Ralph Linton (1893 – 1953)
• Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908 – 2009)

It considers the genetic and cultural origins of self, the role that self plays in socialisation and language, and the types of self we generate in our individual journeys to and through adulthood. We rely on others to tell us about our self, and even to let us know we are a self.