In the socio-anthropological environment, we often encounter the term “anthropology” without any epithets. We mostly use this one word to describe social anthropology specifically.
However, in some other environments and contexts, the term anthropology is not necessarily equal to social anthropology. Thus, there are other types of anthropology (as a general science about humans) that are formed with respect to the various aspects of humanity on which we want to focus in more detail.
Based on the North American model, we usually talk about four interconnected branches of anthropology which, however, are more independent of each other in the European context.
Social anthropology (also called cultural or sociocultural anthropology) deals with human societies and cultures, i.e. it examines the relationships between individuals and groups, their social, economic and political organization, patterns of behaviour, beliefs and systems of ideas in different temporal and spatial segments.
Another stream is linguistic anthropology which studies the social aspects of language use and its functions in connection with other dimensions of society.
Archaeology or archaeological anthropology is characterized by an interest in learning about the details of people’s sociocultural life in the past through any material remains.
And biological (or physical) anthropology focuses its attention on the biological characteristics of humans – it studies the biology of the human body and the behaviour associated with it, as well as their evolution.