Forensic anthropologists use many of the same techniques as bioarchaeologists to develop a biological profile for unidentified individuals including estimating sex, age at death, height, ancestry, diseases they had, or other unique identifying features.
This makes me think about how science can reconstruct a person's life story from their bones alone. It makes me reflect on how much information our skeletons contain about our identity.
To collect data, they go to where their data lives, whether it is a city, village, cave, tropical forest, or desert.
I wonder how anthropologists balance being an outsider while studying communities closely.
Anthropology is a comparative discipline: anthropologists compare and contrast data in order to understand what all humans have in common, how we differ, and how we have changed over time.
This is interesting because comparison is something we all do when we go to other places, but anthropology turns it into a systematic method. It makes me wonder if comparisons run the risk of oversimplifying cultures when comparing them?
Why are people so diverse? Some people live in the frigid Arctic tundra, others in the arid deserts of sub-Saharan Africa, and still others in the dense forests of Papua New Guinea.
This caught my attention because it highlights the extreme diversity of human environments. It makes me think about how biology (climate adaptations) and culture (diet, clothing, housing) complement each other to help people survive. It also makes me wonder if our cultural flexibility is more important than biology in explaining human diversity.