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Biological anthropology

About: Biological anthropology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1126 publications have been published within this topic receiving 12757 citations. The topic is also known as: biological anthropology & somatology.


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TL;DR: In this paper, a career profile of physical anthropologists is presented, focusing on their main research themes, omitting some academic byways, teaching, textbooks, and edited volumes, punctuated with opinionated comments, mostly on physical anthropology, but sometimes rashly on other anthropological specialties.
Abstract: I am delighted to contribute this career piece, although there are many other aged physical anthropologists who are more distinguished! I have tried to avoid duplicating another retrospective rumination (Jolly 2009) while describing personal academic experiences over the past 60 years or so. This is not a CV; I have concentrated on my main research themes, omitting some academic byways, teaching, textbooks, and edited volumes. The account is punctuated with opinionated comments, mostly on physical anthropology, but sometimes, rashly, on other anthropological specialties. It begins early, because my professional interests have deep roots, and finishes with a speculation about the future of physical anthropology, and anthropology in general, in the coming genomic age.

1 citations

01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: It is shown that the biological concept of human race has now completely collapsed, and it is proposed that race be dealt with as a "social" concept like gender, as contrasted to sex.
Abstract: This essay briefly analyzes how the concept of race changed in physical anthropology during the later half of the 20th century. Since Johann Blumenbach divided modern humans into five varieties in 1806, racial classification was an essential part of physical anthropology until about the 1950's. Race was considered to be strictly a biological concept, which must be distinguished from the "ethnic group" as a cultural concept. However, the difficulties of defining race as a biological concept and of obtaining consistent racial classification, together with the consideration of issues on racism, led most physical anthropologists to retreat from "racial" studies during the 1960's. Thus, the chapter on race disappeared quickly in textbooks of physical anthropology in the 1960's. At the same time, rapid development in human population genetics opened a new way for studying human geographical diversity, indicating that phylogenetic relationships and "origins" of ethnic groups can be studied much more objectively than the previous "racial" classifications. In this paper, I try to show that the biological concept of human race has now completely collapsed, and propose that race be dealt with as a "social" concept like gender, as contrasted to sex. However, this does not mean that the geographical diversity of humans is not worth studying in biological anthropology. On the contrary, I emphasize that for the integrated understanding of humans as a biological system, the studies of individual as well as geographical diversities are of crucial importance. Some perspectives for future studies are discussed.

1 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
M. Hills1
TL;DR: In this paper, two statistical problems of importance in physical anthropology are discussed: the first is the problem of estimating the number of anthropologists in a group and the second is the difficulty of identifying anthropologists.
Abstract: (1977). Two statistical problems of importance in physical anthropology. Journal of Applied Statistics: Vol. 4, No. 1, pp. 75-82.

1 citations


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Performance
Metrics
No. of papers in the topic in previous years
YearPapers
202322
202245
202111
202016
201921
201832