Episode Details

Anthropology is the study of human culture and of human evolutionary biology. It is a very broad discipline, and there are many different types of anthropologists. Cultural anthropology considers many aspects of human society and focuses on how it affects human behavior. Linguistic anthropologists study the interaction between culture and language, as well as the origins of human language. Archaeologists focus on the material remains of past peoples. The fourth subfield of anthropology, physical anthropology, is the topic of this course. Physical anthropology itself has different areas. These include paleoanthropology, human variation, genetics, primatology, osteology, and forensic anthropology. Physical anthropologists are scientists, and they use the methods of science to conduct their research. They collect data and develop hypotheses, which are then tested. The lesson ends with the process that the Forensic Archaeology Recovery team used to identify victims from a 2003 nightclub fire in Rhode Island.