The Four Fields of Anthropology

The four fields of anthropology are physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistic and cultural anthropology. In the lecture notes These are very important aspects to study and are known as the Boasian Approach. Biological or physical anthropologists study inherited traits that are passed down within a culture. They use fossils and compare anatomies of other species like our own to understand the evolution of the human mind, body and behavior. The subfield archaeology studies past ways of life by looking at their culture using materials from the past or written records. Language is most important to a linguistic anthropologist, they study how different societies use different sounds and different types of communications to communicate with each other. Culture and sociological aspects are also looked at to see if they influence the type of communication process a society has. Culture anthropologists learn about aspects of cultures all around the world. They also look at how old cultures blend in to new societies and what aspects of their culture they keep and what they change to conform more to society.
The holistic approach is an idea that says that when looking at different societies past or present, it is important to look at the whole idea and all the aspects including physical anthropology, linguistic, archaeology and culture anthropology. This approach is valuable because you gain more of an understanding when more than one of the anthropology subfields are looked at. The subfields relate to the holistic approach because all the parts of a culture are connected to each other so if one part changes then other aspects of the culture will be affected as