Anthropology Essay The Importance Of Anthropology

The Importance of Anthropology Anthropology is a scientific field that seems to be largely misunderstood by the general public. Many people hear the word â€Å"anthropology† and think of an old man with a magnifying glass looking at some dusty old fossils. In reality, anthropology is much more broad than archaeology, which people normally associate with it. Forms of anthropology are used in many aspects of daily life from advertising to law enforcement. Anthropology is difficult to define, as it is extremely broad as a science, but it is vital to everyday life. The best way to define anthropology is as the study of humans. Anthropology has four disciplines that all focus on different aspects of the human race. The first is called biological†¦show more content†¦Real archaeologists spend most of their time in labs, studying their own findings and the findings of others in hopes of finding another clue about the human race’s past. Occasionally, an archaeologist m ay find a location that can serve as an archaeological dig, in which case they will spend a lot of time in the field, digging up and preserving new artifacts for study in a lab. The final, and probably least understood, discipline of anthropology is linguistics. Linguistics, as defined by Texas State University, â€Å"examines how human speech and written text, made possible by the evolved human capacity for language, is a fundamental mechanism through which people create culture and social life† (â€Å"What is Anthropology†). Linguistic anthropologists try to find how language and other forms of communication affect culture in various regions of the world. All of these branches of anthropology work together to find a deeper understanding of the human race. Every branch of anthropology works together in a number of ways. The primary goal of anthropology is understand the human race’s past. Archaeology discovers and interprets clues from past civilizations while biological anthropology uses knowledge of past humans to aid in interpretation. Cultural and linguistic anthropology work together to form an idea of past cultures based on their observation of current cultures. All of these disciplines come together to form a clear picture of a past civilization that fills in a gap inShow MoreRelated Anthropology and Gender Essay1576 Words   |  7 PagesThough women have played an integral part in the history of the discipline of anthropology, it was not until the early 1970’s that the field of anthropology and gender, or feminist anthropology emerged. Sex and gender roles have always been a vital part of any ethnographic study, but the contributors of this theory began to address the androcentric nature of anthropology itself. 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