Holistic Connections

This post primarily stems from Friday's discussion in the Archaeology course, but it's relevant for the Cultural one as well.


We've been talking about the holistic focus of anthropology with an emphasis on how the four subdisciplines intersect and support one another.  I know this can get confusing (and I likely contributed to that), so I'm going to try to clarify some things with this post.

All the sudisciplines of anthropology (as well as other social sciences to some degree) seek to examine/understand/document the many ways of being human and, through that, get at what it means to be human.  So, the goals are at some level identical.  It's the data/observations that differ.

I'm going to simplify here.  Cultural and linguistic anthropology rely on words, behaviors, and materials.  Archaeology utilizes the durable remaining material culture left behind by past people and biological anthropology employs the genes and bodies of living and deceased peoples.  When stripped down, I think it becomes much clearer how each variety of data can be woven together for a more complete, and yes, holistic picture of people.