Need some help for my anthropology class?

Question

I need to come up with a topic to present in my anthro class and I have no ideas on what to do it on. It can be about anything as long as it is under the categories of the four subfields of anthropology:physical anthropology, archaeology, linguistics, and socio-cultural anthropology. I would like to talk about something that is already involved in the anthro region so nothing to far out of the subject would be great. Any ideas?

Answer 1

i would write about the agricultural revolution!!! when we domesticated animals and plants round 10000 yrs ago. as a reference i would read the book Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. also look into Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond, he has a pretty interesting hypothesis about how humans got to were we got based on our placement in the world! those things fascinate me!

Answer 2

You can do it on the start of linguistics. You can relate language and writing to society at the time.

I find it fascinating how in almost every civilization, a writing system was created to make trading easier. True, you can say they wanted an easier way to pass on information, but a lot of it involved money and economics.

Answer 3

I'd choose linguistics because I find language fascinating. There is much less data to sift through because language is a comparatively recent innovation in human evolution and less studied than your other choices. I imagine you can google way through a presentation

Answer 4

Socio-cultural anthro is also fun, given how global everyone has become with internet-ing, and looking at some of the student uprises out of the norm in some countries. Can this be attributed to young people wanting democracy or just wanting to break out and be more American? Just an idea and good luck on your presentation.

Answer 5

The peopling of the New World is a hot topic in archaeology, and there are tons of books and articles dealing with the subject.  You could look at evidence for human occupation prior to Clovis, and arguments that have been raised in opposition to the Pre-Clovis theory.  

You could also talk about Kennewick man, and what bioarchaeology studies on him have shown.  I haven't read much, but I'm sure there is a lot of data on him.

Ethical issues are always interesting... maybe something about NAGPRA.  

Also, in regards to cultural anthropology, maybe look at ethical issues about the impact the anthropologist has on his/her subject matter.  For example, what role should the anthropologist play when living with a culture they are studying, like should they administer medications and vaccinations, etc.  

I would check out the American Anthropological Association's website at www.aaanet.org, they have lots of good stuff.  And if you want to focus more on archaeology, the website archaeology.about.com is good, and it has a link for research paper topics, which might help give you some ideas.

Good luck!

Answer 6

Go for forensic anthropology (part of the physical anthropology field). It's a new field, it's totally interesting, there's lots of information out there about it, but not a lot of people know about it.