Stafford Library: Anthropology Resource Guide: Sub-Fields

E-Books

Encyclopedia of Archaeology
It is paradoxical that a subject that so easily captures the imagination is so difficult for the serious layman to access. Superficial media treatments and picture-book atlases and site guides on the one hand, jargon-heavy scholarly books and narrowly focused articles on the other-there are few ways to learn about the real world of archaeology outside the college classroom or the dig site. The Encyclopedia of Archaeology changes this, in making all aspects of archaeology accessible to a broad audience of the general scientific community, educators, students, and avocational archaeologists.
Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology
The Encyclopedia of Medical Anthropology is unique because it is the first reference work to describe the cultural practices relevant to health in the world's cultures and to provide an overview of important topics in medical anthropology. No other single reference work comes close to marching the depth and breadth of information on the varying cultural background of health and illness around the world. More than 100 experts - anthropologists and other social scientists - have contributed their firsthand experience of medical cultures from around the world.
The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine
A concise yet wide-ranging exploration of the cultural underpinnings of non-biomedical healing.

Economic Anthropology
From Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology
Economic anthropologists study how humans use the material world to maintain and express themselves in social groups.
Forensic Anthropology

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.
Medical Anthropology
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.
Developing World: Topic Page
Those countries that are less developed than the industrialized free-market countries of the West and the industrialized former communist countries.
Globalization: Topic Page
Process by which different parts of the globe become interconnected by economic, social, cultural, and political means.

Adaptation: Topic Page
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).
Biological Anthropology
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.
Ecology: Topic Page
Study of the relationships of organisms to their physical environment and to one another.
Evolution: Topic Page
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.
Physical Anthropology
From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Branch of anthropology concerned with the study of human evolution and human biological variation.
Primatology
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.

Custom
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’.
Ethnicity: Topic Page
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.
Kinship: Topic Page
Kinship is the most universal and basic of all human relationships — that based on ties of blood, marriage, or adoption.
Society: Topic Page
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.

Archaeology: Topic Page

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.
Excavation: Topic Page

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

Linguistics: Topic Page
The scientific study of language; also called linguistic science.
Dialect: Topic Page
Variety of a language used by a group of speakers within a particular speech community.
Grammar: Topic Page
A system of rules specifying a language. The term has often been used synonymously with ‘syntax’, the principles governing the construction of sentences from words.
Semantics: Topic Page
In general, the study of the relationship between words and meanings.
Sociolinguistics: Topic Page
The study of language as it affects and is affected by social relations.