Anthropology in Credo Reference: Sub-Fields

Study of prehistory and history, based on the examination of physical remains. Principal activities include preliminary field (or site) surveys, excavation (where necessary), and the classification, dating, and interpretation of finds.

In archaeology, the systematic recovery of data through the exposure of buried sites and artefacts.

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Economic anthropologists study how humans use the material world to maintain and express themselves in social groups.

From Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology: Health and Illness in the World's Cultures
Forensic anthropology represents the application of our knowledge and techniques of physical anthropology to medico-legal problems.

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
‘Medical anthropology’ is generally understood to refer to the study of social and cultural dimensions of health, ill health and medicine.

Those countries that are less developed than the industrialized free-market countries of the West and the industrialized former communist countries.

Process by which different parts of the globe become interconnected by economic, social, cultural, and political means.

From Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Political Thought
A form of repeated rational action, in which past performance provides the reason for present repetition, by showing ‘what is done’.

In its most restricted form [ethnicity] refers to a group’s shared biological origins; in its broader definition it more closely resembles the concept of nationality.

Kinship is the most universal and basic of all human relationships — that based on ties of blood, marriage, or adoption.

At a socio-political level, a society is an extended group of individuals residing within a bounded geographic area, subject to common political authority and law, has mutual institutions, and shares a distinctive culture. At a broader level, a society is any social grouping that comes together, or is lumped together, on the basis of some shared characteristic or interest.

The scientific study of language; also called linguistic science.

Variety of a language used by a group of speakers within a particular speech community.

A system of rules specifying a language. The term has often been used synonymously with ‘syntax’, the principles governing the construction of sentences from words.

In general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings.

The study of language as it affects and is affected by social relations.

The adjustment of living matter to environmental conditions and to other living things either in an organism's lifetime (physiological adaptation) or in a population over many many generations (evolutionary adaptation).

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Biological anthropology is the study of the biology of human and other primate species from an evolutionary and comparative perspective. It is concerned with the nature of the evolutionary process and with modes of adaptation to the environment.

Study of the relationships of organisms to their physical environment and to one another.

Slow gradual process of change from one form to another, as in the evolution of the universe from its formation to its present state, or in the evolution of life on Earth.

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Branch of anthropology concerned with the study of human evolution and human biological variation.

From Cambridge Encyclopedia of Child Development
Non-human primate research can provide valuable insights into many aspects of human behavior, including, among others, child development and parenting.