Tag Archives: anthropologist

The four fields of anthropology

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The four fields in American anthropology are usually classified as physical, cultural (or ethnology), linguistics and archeology.

Cultural Anthropology deals with the aspects of human lives that are learned. It examines the way different groups keep societal control, delegate responsibilities and other such learned behaviors.

Physical Anthropology studies the way humans have evolved over time and how different environmental and cultural influences affected human evolution.

Archeology is the study of things humans have created in the past.

Linguistics is the study of how languages are formed, evolve and how culture and language interact with each other.

The divisions are made this way for three main reasons. The first is obvious in that it is impossible for a single anthropologist to be well versed in all four at the same time. To the contrary most anthropologists will spend their entire lives studying one small part of one subfield of one of the above main fields. The four groups although they interact and are helpless without each other makes it much easier to determine where and when one group of anthropologists must pass control to another group of specialists.

The second reason is that there are many different ways to study human behavior and one single discipline cannot cover them all. The only real link between linguistics and archeology is that humans created both and both are products of a single culture.

The third reason is the simplistic. Prior to the creation of a “field” of Anthropology the groups already existed as separate disciplines. An archaeologists would receive a degree in archeology; not a degree in anthropology with a specialization in archeology. Still not all scientific cultures agree with this method. Universities in England, for example, still awards degrees specifically in Archeology keeping it separate from Anthropology.

However, there are other classifications that categorize each sub field into either physical or cultural. In this approach the first three items listed below in both Physical and Cultural anthropology are pure research, while the last item in both lists is applied.

Physical

  • Microevolution
  • Evolutionary
  • Primology
  • Forensics

Cultural

  • Archeology
  • Ethnology
  • Linguistics
  • Medical Anthropology

Sapir and Whorf Linguistic Theory

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Sapir and Whorf postulated that grammar and language are part of the mental process, thus they help to shape the way an individual interprets and views the world around them. However, the theory has always been controversial because people tend to see language as a tool created by humans instead of a mold that shapes people. By accepting this theory one must accept that humans do not have complete control over language, allowing a language to die out is as much a loss as any other extinction, and forcing people to adopt a new language forces them to change the way their mind works. If this view is accepted as fact, factors such as the environment would be seen as less important to culture than language. Creating a situation where languages are not just a superficial divide between groups but a concrete difference as much as skin color has been in the past. The result may be a new form of racism where a person is looked down upon because of his language and where the most complex languages would be seen as superior and thus the speakers superior.
Language is important to anthropology because of three things. The first is that language is not formed spontaneously and it changes very slowly, and thus it acts as a time capsule. The second is that language is a human universal; there are no groups of humans without some form of language. The third is that a language reflects the culture it was created in; the entirety of a cultures values are focused in their language. Through studying a language an anthropologist can look into the culture as a whole and how it has evolved over time.