Anthropology is a very interesting topic to study. It is the study of humankind as biological organisms, cultural beings, past civilizations, and present societies. Anthropology is also broken into 4 different subfields, such as: Physical or Biological Anthropology, Archeology, Cultural Anthropology ((Ethnography) and Linguistic Anthropology.
Physical or Biological Anthropology is the study of human evolution and human variation. Not only do they study human, but also a category called near-humans, which includes: monkeys, apes, fossil ancestors and other primates (Palomar 1.) There are three specific areas that biological anthropologists research, these are: human biology, primatology and paleoanthropology. Human biology is mainly focused on human genetics and how they react to non-cultural adaptions. Primatologists study the non-human relatives. They observe the primates and learn the similarities between them and humans; they use the information to determine how the human ancestors were ages ago. Paleoanthropologists discover the early fossils and use them as a timeline to determine the evolution of humans. A type of biological anthropologist could observe a certain type of human or primate group, gather the information and over look of how humans have transformed over years. For example, a primatologist can analyze the female mother monkey and state the similarities from them and a human female mother by them both being careful with their new born more than the male would be. It’s the female that takes care more of the baby than the male, for the primates. For human beings, it goes both ways. (Class discussions)
Archeology is the study of the prehistory and early history of societies and their cultural. There are different types of archeologists, such as: classical archeologists who study the Middle East and Mediterranean civilizations. Historical archeologists, study the missing parts of the historically modern societies. Prehistoric archeologists study the pre-literate societies, for example the North American Indians. Underwater archeologists study ancient shipwrecks and sunken cities. Zoo archeologists study the animal remains that are found in archeological sites (Palomar 1). All these types of archeologists have one goal: to find anything that remains from the earlier societies. They can usually find paintings or certain tools that were used for different cultures. Archeologists could analyze gender by finding of what they had. For example there can be tools they discover that females used, as in some sort of make up.
Another type of subfield in anthropology is cultural anthropology. Cultural anthropology is the study of cultural aspects of human societies around the world. It has to do with anything we have, think and do. Anthropologists do research projects to learn about a certain cultural group and the type of fieldwork they do. This is what they call Ethnography. This work later is compared to similar cultures to discover what they have in common, this is known as ethology (Palomar 1). They also focus of the marriage patterns they have, kinship systems, social and political organizations and different types of
