Anthropology
The comparative study of humans across time and space — encompassing our biological origins and variation, our cultures and institutions, our material remains and the languages we speak. In the American tradition since Franz Boas, anthropology is a four-field discipline: cultural, linguistic, archaeological, and biological (physical). The British tradition centered on social anthropology, focused on social structure and institutions. Both share the commitment to fieldwork — extended close engagement with particular communities or sites — and to comparison as the engine of generalization.
Planned Subdomains
- Cultural anthropology — ethnography, kinship, ritual, exchange, political organization, religion
- Biological anthropology — human evolution, paleoanthropology, primatology, modern human variation, paleogenomics, forensic anthropology
- Archaeology — material culture, sites, dating methods, prehistoric and historic
- Linguistic anthropology — language as cultural practice, ethnopragmatics, discourse — _moves to [[../Linguistics/index|Linguistics]]
- Applied anthropology — development, business, human-rights, policy
- Medical anthropology — illness, healing systems, biomedicine cross-culturally
- Economic anthropology — exchange, value, gift, money
- Political anthropology — power, governance, statehood, resistance
- Visual / media anthropology — film, photography, digital ethnography
Tier 1 Status (3 of 3 complete)
- cultural-anthropology — ethnographic theory, kinship, ritual, exchange
- biological-anthropology — hominin evolution, primatology, modern human variation
- archaeology-foundations — methods, theory, periods, world archaeology
Tier 2 — In progress
- paleoanthropology-and-ancient-dna — hominin species in fine resolution; finds, dating, aDNA, paleopathology
Tier 3 — Catalogs online
- Tier 3 index
- hominin-species-catalog — every named hominin Sahelanthropus → sapiens with specimens (AL 288-1, KNM-WT 17000, OH 5, TM 266) + admixture map
Planned Tier 2 Deep Dives
- Major Ethnographies Surveyed — classic and contemporary site studies catalogued
- Paleoanthropology Deep — hominin species in fine resolution; finds, dating, controversies
- Bioarchaeology and Ancient DNA — aDNA revolution, isotope evidence, paleopathology
- Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology — Tomasello, dual inheritance, cumulative culture
Planned Tier 3 Catalogs
- Kinship Systems by Culture — descent, affinity, residence, marriage type
- Lithic Technology Timeline — Oldowan through Mesolithic in detail
- Hominin Species Catalog — every named species with date, site, finder, status
Adjacent
- ecology-and-evolution — evolutionary theory underlying biological anthropology
- ancient-history — overlap with later archaeology
- historical-linguistics-and-typology — language and prehistoric demography
- philosophy-of-mind-and-language — embodied cognition, intersubjectivity
- sociolinguistics-and-applied — linguistic anthropology
- transformer-architecture — computational and digital ethnography