Week 1 — Readings & Resources
Your primary reading is Chapter 1 (in this module). Everything below is the optional, go-deeper layer — pick what helps, skip the rest.
How to use this page
This page has 10 items (4 readings and 6 videos). Allow 58–68 minutes for everything. Each group points back to the matching chapter section and class-session segment, so use the full menu when you want more, or take the quick path below.
Every video here has captions: turn them on with the CC button in the player. The chapter covers the same ideas in text.
Pick-one quick path (16–20 min total)
① Four subfields, one subject
Chapter 1, Section “Name the four subfields: four questions about one place” · Session 1, Segment 2, “The four subfields” · Remember: cultural, linguistic, archaeological, and biological anthropology all study humans, and applied work runs across all four.
- Four Fields of Anthropology — Kinkella Teaches Archaeology — a short tour of the four subfields, one at a time; as you watch, check whether it mentions applied anthropology, which the chapter adds as running across all four. (video, 6 min) (captions: creator)
- What Does Anthropology Mean to You? Pt. 2 — American Anthropological Association — a one-minute clip from the discipline's professional association on how knowledge about the human condition can be put to work; compare it with the chapter's definition of applied anthropology. (video, 1 min) (captions: creator)
- About — Society for Applied Anthropology — a short page from a professional society whose members, from business, health care, law, government, and other fields, apply the study of human behavior to real-world challenges. Use it while working through the Week-1 module overview. (reading, 2–3 min)
- Human Origins: One Species, Living Worldwide — Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History — a short museum video on how one human species came to live around the world, a taste of biological anthropology, the subfield this course visits only where it needs to. (video, 4 min) (captions: creator)
② Not dinosaurs: what archaeology studies
Chapter 1, Section “Clear away three wrong turns about the field” · Session 1, Segment 3, “Three wrong turns” · Remember: archaeology studies past human ways of life through what people left behind, and dinosaurs belong to paleontology.
- What Is Archaeology? — Society for American Archaeology — the professional society's own explanation of archaeology as the study of the human past through material remains; read the opening and the section that asks whether archaeologists study dinosaurs. (reading, 5–8 min)
- What is Archaeology? — Kinkella Teaches Archaeology — an explainer that treats archaeology as reconstructing the human past from artifacts; set it beside the chapter's correction of the fossil-hunting myth. (video, 9 min) (captions: creator)
③ Holism, comparison, and fieldwork
Chapter 1, Section “Use the anthropological perspective: holism, comparison, fieldwork” · Session 2, Segment 4, “The anthropological perspective” · Remember: see the whole, compare it with somewhere else, and stay long enough to learn it.
- What Is Cultural Anthropology? — SAPIENS — an anthropology magazine's explainer on what cultural anthropologists study and how; read the parts on fieldwork, holism, and comparison, and notice how long the magazine says fieldwork can last. (reading, 10–14 min)
- How do you conduct ethnographic research? — AnthroDorphins — an introduction to how cultural anthropologists do long-term fieldwork and how the method changed over time; listen for the move away from relying on other people's reports. (video, 15 min) (captions: creator)
- What does the Smithsonian Folklife Festival teach us? — Smithsonian Folklife — a two-minute reflection on what a festival of living traditions teaches its visitors; ask yourself what a visitor learns by setting someone else's tradition beside their own. (video, 2 min) (captions: creator)
Optional one-stop reference (free online reference)
- Introduction to Human Evolution — Smithsonian Human Origins Program — a museum's plain overview of human evolution, the subject of biological anthropology; read the opening section on what human evolution is, and skip the species-by-species details. (reading, 4–6 min)
Heads-up (links rot): these point to outside sites that occasionally move or rename pages. If a link ever fails, tell your instructor and use the reference above in the meantime.
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