Anthropology in Credo: 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.

Scientific study of language, covering the structure (morphology and syntax; see grammar), sounds (phonology), and meaning (semantics); also called linguistic science. The history of the relations of languages to each other and the cultural place of language in human behavior.

Variety of a language used by a group of speakers within a particular speech community. Every individual speaks a variety of their language, termed an idiolect.

A system of rules specifying a language; principles governing the construction of sentences from words. Description of the structure of a language, consisting of the sounds (see phonology); the meaningful combinations of these sounds into words or parts of words, called morphemes; and the arrangement of the morphemes into phrases and sentences, called syntax.

[Gr.,=significant] in general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings. The empirical study of word meanings and sentence structures in existing languages is a branch of linguistics; the abstract study of meaning in relation to language or symbolic logic systems is a branch of philosophy.

The study of language as it affects and is affected by social relations. Sociolinguistics encompasses a broad range of concerns.

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. Globalization has become increasingly rapid since the 1970s and 1980s as a result of developments in technology, communications, and trade liberalization. In politics, a big buzzword in political speech and a ubiquitous analytical category in academic debate; globalization operates today rather like modernization did in the mid-twentieth century as the key term of a master discourse about the general state of the world. The most common political version of the discourse depicts globalization as an unstoppable process of global integration, a supposedly inevitable process that while being driven by free market capitalism also necessitates all the free market reforms of neo-liberalism.

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. Ethnicity and identity are closely aligned in popular and academic discussions. In fact, many often use the term ethnicity as a way to identify how individuals are grouped or group themselves according to some shared national or regional heritage, religion, class, language, or culture.

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 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). The ability to adapt is a fundamental difference between living and nonliving matter.

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. Process by which life has developed by stages from single-celled organisms into the multiplicity of animal and plant life, extinct and existing, that inhabits the 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.