The Branches of anthropology Are cultural, physical, linguistic and archeological anthropology. The meaning and purpose of anthropology is the scientific study of humanity.
Anthropology is the science that studies humanity in its various fields. It is formed by the combination of Greek words"anthropo"meaning human science and"logy"meaning science.
Man's inherent curiosity about himself was the main reason that influenced the emergence of anthropology to systematically study humanity.
Anthropology deals with all varieties of human population in all parts of the world, both past and present.
Study who man is and how man develops over a period of time, why he sees, speaks and acts in a certain way.
It is a broad discipline dedicated to the comparative study of humanity, from its first appearance to its present stage of development.
Anthropology looks at man in both time and space. Time refers to the stages of development of man in the process of evolution during different periods of time and space refers to the differentiation of physical and cultural types in modern man living in different environments around the world.
The importance of anthropology lies in the understanding that gives man of his own humanity.
Main branches of anthropology
Anthropology is generally divided into four major branches and these in turn are subdivided. Each branch teaches distinctive skills.
However, there are also a number of similarities among them. Then the main branches of anthropology.
Cultural Anthropology
Cultural anthropology is the main division of anthropology that explains culture in its many aspects.
It is anchored to the collection, analysis and explanation (or interpretation) of the primary data of the extended ethnographic field research.
This discipline, both in America and in Europe, has launched a wide network and includes several approaches. It has produced collateral approaches such as studies of culture and personality, history of culture, cultural ecology, cultural materialism, ethnohistory and historical anthropology.
These subdisciplines exploit diverse methods of the sciences and the humanities. Cultural anthropology has become a family of approaches guided by the concept of culture.
Central trends and recurrent debates since the mid-nineteenth century have introduced universalist versus particularist perspectives, scientific versus humanistic perspectives, and the explanatory power of biology (nature) versus culture (nutrition).
These last two (nature and nutrition) have been two persistent themes in the dynamics of cultural change and symbolic meanings at the core of culture.
Physical Anthropology
Also known as biological anthropology deals with the origin, evolution and diversity of people.
Physical anthropologists work extensively on three major sets of problems: the evolution of the human and nonhuman primate, the human variation and its meaning, and the biological bases of human behavior.
The course that has taken human evolution and the processes that have taken place are of equal concern.
To explain diversity within and among human populations, physical anthropologists should study past populations of fossil hominids as well as non-human primates.
Much light has been cast on the relationship with other primates and on the nature of the transformation to human anatomy and behavior in the course of evolution from early hominids to modern people, a span of at least four million years.
The processes responsible for the differentiation of people into geographic populations and the general unity of the Homo sapiens Include natural selection, mutation, genetic derivation, migration, and genetic recombination.
The genetic and anthropometric information collected by physical anthropologists provides data not only on the groups that inhabit the world, but also on the individuals that compose them.
Estimates of the likelihood that children inherit certain genes may help counsel families about certain medical conditions.
Archaeological Anthropology or Archeology
Archaeological anthropology traces the origin, growth and development of culture in the past. By past is meant the period prior to history when man had not acquired power over written language to be able to record the history of his life.
The archaeologist tries to reconstruct the events of the man's past that date back millions of years.
Archeology teaches about the technology used in the past by analyzing the tools people have left.
On this basis it can shed light on the economic activities of the people. The engravings of pottery, jewelry, among others, reveal the artistic abilities of the people.
Archaeological anthropology attempts to understand the geological processes and particularly the climatic phases that have left evidence on the surface of the earth.
Archaeological evidence is found in abundance mainly in alluvial terraces.
The main methods of archaeologists are excavation to discover artefacts dating back to an approximate period of time and to build the cultural history of man's past based on that.
Linguistic Anthropology
Linguistic anthropology is the branch of anthropology that is about language. It refers to the languages of all people, past and present, as it is the main vehicle through which man preserves and transmits his culture from generation to generation.
He is also interested in the relationship between language and cultural cognition as well as cultural behavior.
Linguistic anthropologists study unwritten languages and also written languages. This characteristic is related to the systems of knowledge, beliefs, assumptions and conventions that produce particular ideas at particular moments in the minds of people.
Each of these characteristics comes from the mind of the people. Each of these characteristics is culturally conditioned and therefore unique to each culture and society.
The study of the famous Egyptian hieroglyphs is a clear example of linguistic anthropology.
References
- Haviland, William A.; Prins, Harald E. L.; McBride, Bunny; Walrath, Dana (2010), Cultural Anthropology: The Human Challenge (13th ed.), Cengage Learning, ISBN 0-495-81082-7.
- Maccurdy, George Grant (1899). "Extent of Instruction in Anthropology in Europe and the United States". Proceedings of the American Association for Advancement of Science: 382-390.
- Hylland Eriksen, Thomas. (2004)"What is Anthropology"Pluto. London. P. 79. ISBN 0745323200.
- Ingold, Tim (1994). "Introduction to culture". Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology. P. 331. ISBN 0415021375.
- Kottak, Conrad Phillip (2010). Anthropology: appreciating human diversity (14th ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. Pp. 579-584. ISBN 978-0-07-811699-5.
- Kottak, Conrad P. (1999). "The New Ecological Anthropology". American Anthropologist. 101: 23. JSTOR 683339. doi: 10.1525 / aa.1999.101.1.23.
- (2016). What is Anthropology? 26 July, 2017, American Anthropological Association Website: americananthro.org
- Myron J. Aronoff, Anthony Seeger and Others. (31 August, 2015). Anthropology. 26 July, 2017, of Encyclopædia Britannica, inc. Website: britannica.com
- Berger, P. (1963). Invitation to Sociology: A Humanistic Perspective. New York: Oxford University Press.
- Radcliffe-Brown, A. (1952). Structure and Function in Primitive Society. London.