Anthropology from 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. MORE

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

The national repository in London for treasures in science and art. Located in the Bloomsbury section of the city, it has departments of antiquities, prints and drawings, coins and medals, and ethnography. MORE

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

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

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. MORE

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

The study of language as it affects and is affected by social relations. Sociolinguistics encompasses a broad range of concerns, including bilingualism, pidgin and creole languages, and other ways that language use is influenced by contact among people of different language communities. MORE

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
Its predominant aim was to integrate conventional economic issues with anthropological perspectives, to place these issues in their wider contexts of social relations, concepts and values. This included subjects such as the way labour is divided, the means for producing and distributing goods and services, and questions of ownership, property and inheritance. MORE

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. Historically, such applications have focused on skeletal remains, although issues involving soft tissue are at times included. MORE

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. MORE

Those countries that are less developed than the industrialized free-market countries of the West and the industrialized former communist countries. Countries of the developing world are the poorest, as measured by their income per head of population, and are concentrated in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. MORE

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

From World of Sociology, Gale
A custom is a social practice, a way of doing things or a way of thinking about something in a particular society or culture. The term is usually used in anthropology, while the concept is usually called a norm in sociology. Customs are common practices, beliefs, or rituals shared by members of a social group, and provide one way of distinguishing cultures from each other. MORE

From Africa and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History
Ethnicity identifies and classifies people into groups according to perceived cultural similarities and differences of beliefs, values, customs, histories, and any other relevant views and practices that are subsequently passed on to future generations. The historical presence and use of the idea of ethnicity is important to understanding both transatlantic colonial history and the postcolonial world. MORE

From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
The study of kinship is so central to anthropology that Robin Fox has likened it to logic in philosophy, as ‘the basic discipline of the subject’ (1967: 10). This is hardly surprising, since it deals quite literally with matters of life and death, not to mention identity and personhood, honour and shame, control of property, and succession to positions of authority. MORE

From The Social Science Jargon-Buster
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. MORE

From World of Sociology, Gale
Structure is most frequently used in the phrase social structure, an overused but undertested idea about some identified network of social positions, relationships, and/or behaviors. The phrase is used to describe how constituent participants engage each other in patterned ways. MORE

From McGraw-Hill Concise Encyclopedia of Science and Technology
The subfield of anthropology that deals with human and nonhuman primate evolution, the biological bases of human behavior, and human biological variability and its significance. MORE

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. MORE

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. In biology, it is the 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. MORE

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). MORE

From Bloomsbury Guide to Human Thought
Primatology is the study of the biology of the primates, the order of mammals which includes humans and our close relatives the monkeys and apes. MORE

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