Chapter 2

Sub-fields of Anthropology

• Traditionally, anthropology is categorized into four major

fields

• Physical/Biological Anthropology,

• Archeology/archaeological anthropology

• Linguistic Anthropology

• Socio-Cultural Anthropology

• Four―fields approach was developed by German-American

anthropologist called Franz Boas
• Archaeological anthropology

• Alternatively called archaeology

• It studies human lives in the past, analysing the material

culture/physical remains (artefacts, features and eco-facts)

• Artifacts are material remains made and used by the past

peoples

• They are removed from the site and taken to the laboratory
for further analysis.

• Examples of artifacts: tools, ornaments, arrowheads, coins,

and fragments of pottery
• Features are like artifacts, made or modified by past
people, but cannot be readily carried away from the site.

• Archaeological features include house foundations,

ancient buildings, fireplaces, steles, and postholes.

• Eco-facts are non-artefactual; organic and

environmental remains such as soil, animal bones, and
plant remains that were not made or altered by
humans; but were used by them.

• Eco-facts provide archaeologists with important data

concerning the environment and how people used
natural resources in the past.
• Sub-fields of Archaeology: Prehistoric Archaeology,
Historical Archaeology and ethnoarchaeology

• Prehistoric archaeology investigates human history

and cultures that existed before the invention of
writing

• Prehistoric archaeology focuses on entire period

from 6,000 years ago to first stone tools (artifacts)
which emerged 2.5 million years agro

• From 6000 years to the discovery of first stone

tools (the first artifacts) around 2.5 million years
ago
• Historic archaeologists reconstruct the cultures of
people who used writing and about whom historical
documents have been written.

• Historic archaeology covers the time from the

discovery of writing around 6,000 years ago to present

• Ethnoarcgaelogy studies material culture of current

societies (e.g., pottery products) to understand the
cultures (life styles) of past societies

• Archaelogical findings in North, south, east and

western part of Ethiopia have shown that the coutry
owns imporatnt sites of ancient civilization.
 Linguistic Anthropology (LA)
• Alternatively called anthropological linguistics

• Studies (1) how human language is used within a

society and (2) how the human brain acquires and
uses languages.

• It tries to understand languages variation in their

structures, units, and grammatical formations.

• It gives special attention to the study of unwritten

languages.
• Language is a key to explore culture

• LA Studies human language as a cultural resource

and speaking as a cultural practice in its social
and cultural context, across space and time.

• Language is basically a system of information

transmission and reception.

• Humans communicate messages by sound

(speech), by gesture (body language), and in
other visual ways like writing.
• Analogous to genes that carry and transmit genetic materials
to offspring, languages hand down cultural traits from one
generation to another.

• Animals could communicate and develop certain behaviors

through conditioning but they do not have a capacity to pass
on their own offspring.

• Language is the most distinctive feature of being human

• This is the boundary between human beings and other

animals including higher primates.

• Linguistic anthropology studies contemporary human

languages as well as those of the past
• It is divided into four distinct branches or areas
of research:

1. Structural or Descriptive Linguistics,

2. Historical Linguistics,

3. Ethno-Linguistics, and

4. Socio-linguistics.
• Structural /Descriptive Linguistics
• studies the structure of linguistic patterns

• It examines sound systems, grammatical systems, and the meanings

attached to words in specific languages to understand the structure and
set of rules of given language.

• Every culture has a distinctive language with its own logical structure and
set of rules for putting words and sounds together for the purpose of
communicating.

• The task of the descriptive linguist is to compile dictionaries and

grammar books for previously unwritten languages.

• For structuralist linguist or structural linguistic anthropologist, even if

there are thousands of human languages, at least structurally all of them
are similar making it possible for everyone of us to grasp and learn
languages other than our so called ‘mother tongue’.
• Ethno-linguistics (cultural linguistics): examines the relationship
between language and culture.

• In any language, certain cultural aspects are emphasized

• This includes, for example, types of snow among the Inuit, cows
among the pastoral Maasai, or automobiles in U.S. culture)

• Ethno-linguistics analyses cultural features expressed in ethnic

vocabulary

• Cultural linguists also explore how different linguistic categories

can affect how people categorize their experiences, how they
think, and how they perceive the world around them.
• Historical linguistics

• Deals with the emergence of language in general

and how specific languages have converged and
diverged over time.

• It focuses on the comparison and classifications

of different languages to differentiate the
historical links between them.
• Socio-linguistics
• examines how the use of language defines social groups

• investigates linguistic variation within a given language.

• No language is a homogeneous system in which

everyone speaks just like everyone else.

• One reason for variation is geography that could result

in regional dialects and accents.

• Linguistic variation also is expressed in the bilingualism

of ethnic groups.
 Socio-Cultural Anthropology

• It is also called

 social anthropology (British tradition) or

 cultural anthropology (US tradition) or

 ethnology (in countries like Germany)

• Socio-cultural anthropology is the largest

sub-field of anthropology.
• It deals with contemporary human society and
culture across space

• Society is the group of people who have similar

ways of life, but culture is a way of life of a group
of people

• Society and culture are two sides of the same coin

• Socio-cultural anthropology describes, analyzes,

interprets, and explains social, cultural and
material life of contemporary human societies
and culture.
• Sub-divided into many other specialized fields:

• Anthropology of Art—study of art in different

cultural contexts. It focuses on historical, economic
and aesthetic dimensions in non-Western art forms

• Medical Anthropology—study of social and

cultural dimensions of health, ill health and
medicine

• Urban Anthropology—studies cities and the

sociocultural experiences and practices of urban
dwellers in relation to the larger socioeconomic and
cultural contexts.
• Economic Anthropology—study of how humans use
the material world to maintain and express
themselves in social groups.

• Political Anthropology—studies structure of political

systems in traditional and modern societies

• Development Anthropology—application of
anthropological perspectives to the multidisciplinary
branch of development studies. It takes international
development and international aid as primary objects.

• All of these sub-fields constitute what is called applied

anthropology.
• Anthropology of Religion– study of religious institutions in relation to
other social institutions, and the comparison of religious beliefs and
practices across cultures

• Demographic Anthropology—specialty within demography which uses

anthropological theory and methods to provide a better understanding
of demographic phenomena in current and past populations.

• Ecological Anthropology—study of cultural adaptations to

environments; studies how cultural beliefs and practices helped human
populations adapt to their environments, and how people used elements
of their culture to maintain their ecosystems

• Psychological Anthropology—studies the interaction of cultural and

mental processes

• Ethnomusicology—study of music in its social and cultural contexts,

exploring what music means to different people and groups.
• Etc
• It studies the lives of living people which include
 social (human relations),
 symbolic or nonmaterial (religious, language,
and any other symbols) and
 material (all man-made objects) aspects

• Socio-cultural anthropologists conduct

ethnographic fieldwork and produce detailed
accounts about cultures and societies that they
studied.
• The method that they use:

Ethnography (based on intensive and extensive

fieldwork) and

Ethnology (based on cross-cultural comparison)

• Ethnography provides a comprehensive account of a particular
community, society, or culture.

• It describes the features of specific cultures in as much detail

as possible including local behavior, beliefs, customs, social
life, economic activities, politics, and religion.

• These detailed descriptions (ethnographies) are the result of

extensive field studies (usually a year or more, in duration) in
which the anthropologist observes, talks to, and lives with the
people he or she is studying.

• During ethnographic fieldwork, the anthropologist

(ethnographer) gathers data that he or she organizes,
describes, analyzes, and interprets to build and present that
account, which may be in the form of a book, article, or film.
• Ethnology is the comparative study of contemporary cultures and societies,
wherever they may be found.

• It is a method that examines, interprets, analyzes, and compares

ethnographic data gathered from different societies.

• It uses such data to compare and contrast and to make generalizations about
society and culture.

• Ethnologists seek to understand why there are similarities and differences in

contemporary societies and cultures across the world.

• Looking beyond particularities in cultures and societies, ethnologists attempt

to identify and explain cultural differences and similarities, to test
hypotheses, and to build theory to enhace understanding of how social and
cultural systems work.

• The primary objective of ethnology is, therefore, to surface the underlying

cultural principles and “rules” that govern human behavior.
Ethnography Ethnology

Relies on ethnographic Uses data collected by a series

fieldwork to collect of researchers
data

Often descriptive Usually synthetic

Group/community Comparative/cross-cultural
specific
• Physical Anthropology
• Studies both human biological evolution and contemporary racial variations
among peoples of the world.

• Focuses on the biological aspects of human beings

• Physical anthropologists study how culture and environment have influenced

biological evolution and contemporary human variations.

• Human biology affects or even explains some aspects of behavior, society, and
culture such as marriage patterns, sexual division of labor, gender ideology
etc.

• The features of culture in turn have biological effects like the standards of
attractiveness, food preferences, and human sexuality.

• Biological variations such as morphology/ structure, color, and size are

reflections of changes in living organism.

• Since change occurs in the universe, it also applies in human beings.

• Human biological variations are the result of the
cumulative processes of invisible changes occurring in
human life.

• These changes have been accumulated and passed

through genes.

• Genes are characteristics that carry biological traits of

an organism, including human beings.

• The major sources of biological variations are derived

from the interrelated effects of natural selection,
geographical isolation and genetic mutations.
• Sub-fields of Physical Anthropology
 Biological anthropology—concerned with the origin, evolution and diversity
of humankind across time and space

 Forensic anthropology—applying skeletal analysis and techniques in

archaeology to solving criminal cases.

 Primatology—studies about primates or recent human ancestors to explain

human evolution; primatologists study anatomy and social behavior of such
non-human primate species to get clues about our own evolution as species

 Paleoanthropology—study of human biological evolution via the analysis of

fossil remains from prehistoric times to determine the missing link that
connect the modern human with its biological ancestors

 Population genetics—studies how genes evolve through time and space

 Human ecology—studies the interactions between human beings and the

environment in which they live.
• These subfields of physical anthropology are
closely related to natural sciences, particularly
biology.

• There are two major areas of research in

physical anthropology:

• 1) human evolution, and

• 2) modern human variation

• Human evolution is the study of the gradual
processes of simple forms into more
differentiated structures in hominid.

• It is interested in reconstructing the evolutionary

record of the human species using fossils/bones.

• Research in human evolution shows that the

origin of humanity is traced back over 6 million
years.

• Africa is found to be the cradle of human beings.

• Research findings indicate that East Africa,
especially the Great Rift Valley, is the origin of
mankind.

• The oldest fossils of human ancestors were

discovered in this part of the continent.

• The discovery of fossils such as Lucy/Dinknesh

(Australopithecus Afarensis) in the Afar Region
shows that Ethiopia is among African
countries regarded as the origin of human
ancestors.
• Human evolution is further divided into three
specialties:

1. Paleoanthropology

2. Primatology and

3. Human genetics
• Palaeoanthropology (paleo meaning “old”) is the study of human biological
evolution through analysis of fossil remains from prehistoric times to determine
the missing link that connect modern human with its biological ancestors.

• Primatology studies about primates or recent human ancestors to explain

human evolution.

• Primatologists study the anatomy and social behavior of such non-human

primate species as gorillas and chimpanzees in an effort to gain clues about our
own evolution as a species.

• Human genetics is concerned to investigate how and why the physical traits of
contemporary human populations vary throughout the world.

• It focuses to examine the genetic materials of an organism such as DNA and

RNA.

• Genetic studies are crucial in understanding how evolution works and plays
important role in identifying the genetic source of some hereditary disease like
sickle cell anemia and cystic fibrosis.
 Evolutionary and Paleo-anthropological perspectives on human origin
• The origin of human beings has been one of the major
questions that anthropologists today are grappled with.

• The existence of past life on earth, with implication of

evolution from simples to complex forms, has been found on
fossils from the past.

• How did these different forms of life emerge and new species
arise?

• Evolution of life forms has been theorized since ancient times.

• However, comprehensive theories of evolution concerning the

evolution of life were developed only during the 19th century.
• Anthropologists today rely on scientific views
of evolution—drawn mainly from biological
anthropological explanation—in order to
explain human origins.

• According to this explanation, evolution is

described as the cumulative effects of three
independent facts or attributes.

• These independent facts—the following three

attributes of evolution—can be observed in
nature every day.
• The three attributes are:

• Replication─ life forms have offspring

• Variation─ each offspring is slightly different from its parents, and

its sibling

• Selection─ not all offspring survive, and those that do tend to be

the ones best suited to their environment

• Scientific explanation of human origin and the concept of evolution

are attributed to

a. a series of discoveries of early modern period and

b. the works of handful of scientists in the physical/natural sciences

• Charles Darwin (1809-1882), a British Naturalist of the period, is among
prominent peoples who contributed for the study of human origin

• He introduced his theory of natural selection in the evolution of species and

the idea of survival of the fittest.

• One of his contribution: humanity was part of the world of living things.

• His theory opposed biblical story of creation which explains that humanity is
a special creation fundamentally different from all other living things.

• Darwin’s ideas and many others that it fertilized set the foundation for a new
study: the study of humans as living, evolving creatures in many ways no
different from the rest of animal life

• Today, anthropologists have accumulated a huge amount of data, much of it

based on studies of DNA, the molecule that shapes all Earth life, to back the
claims Darwin made in 1859
 Anthropological perspectives on racial types and
human physical variation
• Why isn’t everyone the same?

• How did contemporary variations come about? and what do they

mean for humanity as a species?

• The answer comes from the study of human biology by physical

anthropologists

• Accordingly, modern diversity is the result of more of human

selective breeding than geographical adaptation

• Adaptation can be understood as a behavioral (cultural) and/or

biological process that increases the likelihood of survival for an
organism.
• An adaptation can be a mutation that confers an
advantage

• Just like any other living thing, human beings

adapt to their environments through an
evolutionary process

• People make use of two forms of adaptation

1. Cultural adaptation

2. Biological adaptation
• Cultural adaptation
• Our species adapt through both biological and cultural means
• But they adapt mainly through cultural means,

• This means that human beings survive their environments not

because they have adapted to them biologically, but because
they adapt using artifacts and complex behavior.

• It should be noted that human bodies (human beings) have

adapted to certain conditions over time.

• In humans, cultural adaptations include complex behavior, such

as the making tools.

• These behaviors aren’t passed on genetically but rather

culturally.
• Biological adaptation
• Some of these bodily adaptations are pretty easily visible while others are visible only
when you look very closely at the genes.

• Examples:

• Response of human Skin—one of the most visible human characteristics - is a good

example of biological adaptation to a particular environment.

• The darkest skin appears in populations originating in tropical zones, such as Africa and
Asia.

• Darker skin, then, is a form of biological adaptation to the geographical conditions of Africa

• Lightest skin is a trait of people found in northern Europe and is a biological adaptation to
the geographical areas of Europe

• Natural selection favored darker skins in areas that received extensive and more intensive
sunlight

• And individuals with lighter skin can no longer survive in tropical areas where they are
more prone to skin cancers than their counter parts in Europe
• As early human populations were expanding into northern Europe
around 40,000 years ago, those individuals with darker skin were less
able to manufacture Vitamin D and probably experienced a much
lower birthrate than those populations with lighter skin.

• Lighter skin, then, is a biological adaptation to the geographical

conditions of Europe because over time, the prehistoric colonists of
Europe who happened to be born with lighter skin had more offspring,
who themselves carried the genes for lighter skin

• Biological adaptations aren’t instantaneous─ they take place over the

span of generations, so an African moving to Europe won’t quickly
evolve lighter skin, nor will a European travelling to Africa quickly
evolves darker skin

• Light skins produce suntan as a bodily defense mechanism - the

release of dark pigmented melanin – when they face too much
ultraviolet light.
• Response of body Stature– is another example of biological
adaptation in human beings

• This means that difference of body stature between arctic

(such as Inuit) and East African (such as Maasai) people is
meant to foster adaptation.

• Bergmann’s rule indicates that in colder regions, warm-

blooded animals will have stockier bodies than their
counterparts from warmer regions, because stockier bodies
are more efficient at retaining body heat

• Habituation or acclimatization—are the rapid physiological

changes that occur in one’s lifetime - like a mountaineer’s
adjustment to lower oxygen levels at high altitude
 Race and History of Racial Tying
• Like all animals, humans have undoubtedly been classifying their neighbors
in various ways for a very long time.

• Egyptian Classification
• Some of the first records of humans classifying others as certain “types”
come from ancient Egypt

• By 1350 BC, you can see records of them classifying humans by skin color:

 Egyptians were red-skinned

 people south of Egypt were black-skinned

 those living north of the Mediterranean Sea were white-skinned, and

 people to the east were yellow-skinned

• European Classification
• During age of discovery, by the 16th century,
encountering other peoples, Europeans developed
racial classification of their own based on the skin color

• The people they met weren’t Christian and did not

share European culture and values. Hence, Europeans
labeled them Savages

• By the mid-1800s, naturalists began using a method of

describing the shape of the head called the cephalic
index, a ratio measurement of the length and width of
the head, to classify peoples in Europe.
• Accordingly, they found two category of people:
1. Dolichocephalic peoples, who had long and
narrow heads (like most northern Europeans), and

2. Brachycephalic peoples, who tended to have

broad heads — like many southern Europeans.

• They applied concept of biological determinism,

the idea that physical traits were somehow linked
to behavior.

• Many of them thought traits like intellect, values,

and morals were all products of one’s race
• Linneaus’s Racial Classification (1758)
• Linneaus (1758) defined race both as a system of human classification and
social stratification
• Prior to 20th century, it was common to divide humanity into four main
races, which were later recognized in scientific studies and folktales

• It is classiefied into:

• Europeaeus: White; muscular; hair – long, flowing; eyes blue – Acute,

inventive, gentle, and governed by laws.

• Americanus: Reddish; erect; hair – black, straight, thick; wide nostrils –

Obstinate, merry, free, and regulated by custom.

• Asiaticus: Sallow (yellow); hair black; eyes dark – Haughty, avaricious,

severe, and ruled by opinions.

• Africanus: Black; hair –black, frizzled; skin silky; nose flat; lips tumid –
Crafty, indolent, negligent, and governed by caprice or the will of their
masters.
• Application of biological determinism at the moment initiated the
application of Darwin’s principles of biological evolution to
societies and culture of other people

• Then, it has led to the concept of social Darwinism—the idea that

as societies and nations evolved and competed, the morally
superior societies would prevail as the less moral, “savage”
societies were weeded out; and that this was all natural and good.

• With behavioral characteristics “linked” to genetic characteristics

in their minds, many people (including scientists), in the 19 th and
early 20th centuries, even advocated for state regulation of
marriages, family size, and whether to allow an individual to
reproduce.

• This practice became known as eugenics

• As a result, in the 20th century, extremists like the
Nazi, systematically killed millions of Jewish,
Gypsies and others which they considered inferior
to the northern-European Christian ideal

• They attempted to create a master race against

the principle of genetic diversity which is said to
be relevant for the genetic health of a population

• They prevented any interbreeding and creating a

master race would result in a genetically uniform
and genetically vulnerable population which will
be a suicide for the population
The Grand Illusion: Race, turns out, is arbitrary
• Race is an illusion and arbitrary
• Any attempt to classify human races raises a number of questions

• Physical traits used to identify which group an individual belonged

are not binary opposites like black or white, with no middle ground;
rather they are continuous traits

• Difficult to draw a boundary between human population across the

globe based on phenotypic characteristics

• As Lewontin (1972) explains, human racial classification is of no

social value and is destructive of social and human relations

• The reality of genetic ancestry can be important today only for

biomedical reasons (and sometimes forensic identification of bodies)
 What Anthropologists can say for sure about Human Races?

• Race exists but so difficult to define it

• There is not so much geographically based differences

within homo Sapiens.

• First, these genetic differences don’t mean a lot, biologically

• A look at the genes shows no significant species-level

differences—only very minor visible ones such as skin color,
shape of nose, or hair texture

• To most anthropologists, race is nearly meaningless today

• Rather than talking about races, physical anthropologists
more commonly talk today of ancestry—a more general
term that recognizes the reality of some geographically
specific human adaptations

• Important to consider because different human

populations have developed slightly different genetic
characteristics over time.

• Second, cultural behavior is not genetically linked to

those geographical differences

• Most of human behavior is not biologically determined or

filtered in through the natural environment- most of it is
culturally learned
 Human socio-cultural and biological diversity and similarities
• Sociocultural diversity is studied by the sociocultural anthropology

• Biological diversity is studied by the physical anthropology

• How could one understand the source of variations and similarities in human beings today?

1. Using comparative approach and

2. Using Evolutionary theory—biocultural evolution

 The comparative approach

• Comparison, also known as cultural relativism, entails that cultures shouldn't be compared to one
another for the sake of saying one is better than the other.

• Instead cultures should be compared in order to understand how and why they differ and share
commonalties with each other.

• The comparative approach or cultural relativism encourages us not to make moral judgments
about different kinds of humanity, and

• it examines cultures on their own and from the perspective of their unique history and origin.
 Evolutionary Theory

• humanity evolves both as a result of biological factors and cultural

factors—anthropologists call it bio-cultural evolution.

• Humans survive using both their biology and cultural information

while all other animals survive mainly through their biology and by
relying on instinct rather than such cultural information

• Culture is the set of ideas that dictate how you see and act in the world.

• By studying evolution, the change of species through time,

anthropologists treat humanity as one of the biological species in the
animal kingdom

• Human biology and culture have evolved over millions of years and
they will continue to evolve together.
 Human biology affects human culture

• The brain size of humans has become larger over millions of years
of evolution, and this is considered biological change.

• The change in human brain has brought cultural changes in terms of

increased intelligence, language and even the emergence of writing.

 Similarly, human culture affects human biology

• Cultural, not instinctual, information tells you that certain kinds of

wood are good for making a digging stick.

• You do not know about different kinds of wood instinctually but

because detailed information about the properties of different kinds
of wood was passed on to your mind culturally — through some
form of language —by your parent generation or your peers.
• See the following cultural behaviors and their possible
involvement with biological evolution of our species:

• The earliest use of stone tools corresponds with increased

consumption of animal protein. More animal protein in turn
changes the hominid diet and potentially its anatomy.

• The use of clothing (itself a cultural artifact) allows human

bodies to survive in environments they wouldn’t normally
survive in. For example, the human body is naturally best-suited
for equatorial environments, not the Arctic, but the invention of
heavy coats and other such clothing enables that body to survive
Arctic temperatures.

• Paleo-anthropologists are concerned with understanding how

cultural, non-cultural, and bio-cultural evolutionary factors
shaped humanity through time
 Humanity is the most common term we use to refer to human beings.

 Humanity stands for the human species, a group of life forms with the following
characteristics:

 Bipedalism (walking on two legs)

 Relatively small teeth for primates of our size

 Relatively large brains for primates of our size

 Using modern language to communicate ideas

 Using complex sets of ideas called culture to survive

 Standing on two legs and having particularly small teeth and large brains are all
anatomical characteristics, and they’re studied by anthropologists focusing on human
biological evolution.

 Surviving by using a wide array of cultural information is the use of culture.