The different sub-fields of anthropology, their practical application in the society, and importance as a field of specialization.

2. FIELDS OF ANTHROPOLOGY

3. THE FOUR FIELDS OF
ANTHROPOLOGY
SOURCE: HAVILAN, PRINS, WALRATH,
MCBRIDE.(2007). THE ESSENCE OF
ANTHROPLOGY

4. PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
focuses on humans as biological
organisms.
Traditionally, biological
anthropologists concentrated
on human evolution,
primatology, growth and
development, human
adaptation, and forensics.
molecular anthropology,
the anthropological study of
genes and genetic
relationships

5. PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
Paleoanthropology
• focus on biological
changes through
time to understand
how, when, and
why we became
the kind of
organisms we are
today.
• Takes a biocultural
approach focusing
on the interaction
of biology and
culture.
Primatology
• Studying the
anatomy and
behavior of the
other primates
helps us
understand what
we share with our
closest living
relatives and what
makes humans
unique.
• study of living and
fossil primates.
Forensic
Anthropology
• the identification of
human skeletal
remains for legal
purposes.
• also investigate
human rights
abuses such as
systematic
genocides,
terrorism, and war
crimes.
Human Growth,
Adaptation, and
Variation
• Examination of
biological
mechanisms of
growth as well as
the impact of the
environment on
the growth
process.
• physical
anthropologists
study the impacts
of disease,
pollution, and
poverty on growth.

6. Though these 160,000-year-old fossil specimens of two adults and one child
were first unearthed in Ethiopia in 1997, their discovery was not announced
until 2003.

7. • TABON MAN, THE EARLIEST
HUMAN FOSSIL REMAIN IN
THE PHILIPPINES WAS
DISCOVERED IN PALAWAN. IT
IS ESTIMATED TO BE MORE
THAN 20,000 Y.O.

8. The study of other primates provides us with
important clues as to what life may have been
like for our own ancestors.

9. FORENSIC ANTHROPOLOGY
Clyde Snow holds the skull of a
Kurd who was executed by Iraqi
security forces.
Snow specializes is widely known
for his work identifying victims of
state-sponsored terrorism.

10. HUMAN GROWTH, ADAPTATION, AND
VARIATION
• are responsible for some features of human variation
• Example: the enlargement of the right ventricle of the
heart to help push blood to the lungs among the
Quechua Indians of highland Peru.
Developmental
adaptations
• are short-term changes in response to a particular
environmental stimulus.
• For example, a person who normally lives at sea level
will undergo a series of physiological responses if she
suddenly moves to a high altitude.
Physiological
adaptations

11. ARCHAEOLOGY
• THE BRANCH OF ANTHROPOLOGY THATSTUDIES HUMAN CULTURES THROUGH THE RECOVERY AND
ANALYSIS OF MATERIAL REMAINS AND ENVIRONMENTAL DATA.
• MATERIAL PRODUCTS INCLUDE TOOLS, POTTERY, HEARTHS, AND ENCLOSURES THAT REMAIN AS TRACES
OF CULTURAL PRACTICES IN THE PAST, AS WELL AS HUMAN, PLANT, AND MARINE REMAINS, SOME OF
WHICH DATE BACK 2.5 MILLION YEARS.

12. To recover very
small objects
easily missed
in excavation,
archaeologists
routinely
process the
earth they
remove.

13. Ancient Mayan City
of Tikal in Peru

14. Some
archaeological
features are best
seen from the air,
such as this figure
of a hummingbird
made in
prehistoric times
on the NazcaDesert
of Peru.

15. “Ice Man”, Tyrolean Alps, Italy, 1991
Mummified body of
a man who lived
5,200 years ago

16. CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT
•IT IS PART OF ACTIVITIES LEGISLATED TO PRESERVE
IMPORTANT ASPECTS OF A COUNTRY’S PREHISTORIC
AND HISTORIC HERITAGE.

17. LINGUISTIC ANTHROPOLOGY
studies human languages
Linguists may deal with
the
description of
a language
the history of
languages
the relation
between
language and
culture.

18. English is one of a group of languages
in the Germanic subgroup of the Indo-
European family

19. ALL PRIMATES, INCLUDING HUMANS, COMMUNICATE WITH
GESTURES OR BODY LANGUAGE INCLUDING FACIAL EXPRESSION.
Other primates communicate
through nonlanguage vocal systems

20. CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY
• IS THE STUDY OF CUSTOMARY PATTERNS INHUMAN BEHAVIOR, THOUGHT, AND FEELINGS.
• FOCUSES ON HUMANS AS CULTURE-PRODUCING AND CULTURE-REPRODUCING CREATURES

21. CULTURE The (often unconscious)
standards by which
societies—structured
groups of people—operate.
These standards are
socially learned, rather
than acquired through
biological inheritance.

22. TWO MAIN COMPONENTS
Ethnography
Detailed description of a particular
culture primarily based on
fieldwork, which is the term
anthropologists use for on-
location research.
Ethnology
The study and analysis of
different cultures from a
comparative or historical point of
view, utilizing ethnographic
accounts and developing
anthropological theories that help
explain why certain important
differences or similarities occur
among groups.

23. END