Applied biological anthropology

Keywords:

 Clinical genetics;
 Anthropometry;
 Numerical taxonomy;
 Applied biological anthropology

Applied anthropology refers to the application of the method and theory of

anthropology to the analysis and solution of practical problems. In as much as
anthropology traditionally entails four sub-disciplines--Archaeology, biological/physical,
cultural/social, and linguistic anthropology--the practical application of any of these sub-
disciplines may properly be designated "applied anthropology". Indeed, some practical
problems may invoke all sub-disciplines. For example, a Native American community
development program may involve archaeological research to determine legitimacy of
water rights claims, ethnography to assess the current and historical cultural
characteristics of the community, linguistics to restore language competence among
inhabitants, and biological or medical anthropology to determine the causality of dietary
deficiency diseases, et.

Applied Biological Anthropology

Objectives

1. What are the goals of applied biological anthropology, and what human traits and aspects of the
human condition does the discipline consider?
2. What insights does biomedical anthropology shed on common human diseases?
3. What are the goals and methods of forensic anthropology?
4. What does evolutionary biology suggest about the needs of people in a modern, urbanized
world?

A. Promises and Goals of Applied Biological Anthropology

1. Definition
2. Human Adaptation and the Modern Environment
3. Goals of Applied Biological Anthropology

B. Evolutionary Medicine

1. Sudden Infant Death Syndrome

2. Neonatal Jaundice
3. Coping with the "Diseases of Civilization"
4. Human Populations, Infectious Diseases, and Parasites
5. Structural Problems

C. Forensic Anthropology

1. Facial and Dental Reconstruction

 2. Skeletal Reconstructions
3. Cause of Death
4. Human Rights Investigations

D. Human Ecology and Quality of Life

Biological anthropology (also physical anthropology) is the branch of anthropology that studies, in
the context of other primates, the development of the human species. Biological anthropology
incorporates bio-cultural studies of human diversity, the ancestry of the human species; and the
comparative anatomy, behavior, history, and ecology, of historic and present-day primates. It mostly
studies hominid fossil evidence and their evolution and studies.

Physical anthropology emerged in the 18th century as the scientific study of race;[1] the first prominent
physical anthropologist was the German physician Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) of
Göttingen, who amassed a large collection of human skulls, and thus could claim empirical authority on
the subject of human diversity. In the 1830s and 1840s, physical anthropology was prominent in the
debate about slavery, with the scientific, monogenist works of the British abolitionist James Cowles
Prichard (1786–1848) opposing those of the American polygenist Samuel George Morton (1799–1851);
the end of slavery rendered the central anthropological matters mostly trivial.

In the latter part of the 19th century, there emerged national anthropologic traditions. The French
physical anthropologists, led by Paul Broca (1824–1880), focused on cranial anatomy and its
minute variations. The German tradition, led by Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), emphasized the
mutability of human form, the influence of environment and disease upon the human body, and
the lack of fit among race, nation, and culture. The American tradition concentrated upon the
“pacified” aboriginal (Indian) inhabitants of the North American continent, exhuming and
collecting skeletons as scientific objects, along with artifacts, languages, and culture (ways of
life); said investigational method became the “four-field approach” in anthropology.

The term biological anthropology incorporates the non-physical data (genetic markers, primate
behavior, et cetera) that, by mid-century, scientists had recognized existed. In contemporary
usage, the terms physical anthropology and biological anthropology are synonymous. The field
sub-division of the American Anthropological Association is the Biological Anthropology
Section, but the principal professional organization is the American Association of Physical
Anthropologists.

In the US, after the Civil War (1861–65), physical anthropology was an arcane medical speciality. In
1897, it was the Columbia University appointment of Franz Boas (1858–1942), that propelled the
field of anthropology into its modern academic structure. As a physical anthropologist, Boas was
hired for his expertise in measuring schoolchildren, and collecting of Inuit skeletons. From his
German education and training, Boas emphasized the mutability of the human form; and minimize
race (then a biology synonym) in favor of studying culture, (see Cultural Relativism).American
physical anthropology was developed by Ales Hrdlicka (1869–1943), at the Smithsonian Institution,
and by Earnest Hooton (1887–1954), at Harvard University. Hrdlicka, a physician, studied physical
antropology in France, under Leonce Manouvrier, before working at the Smithsonian in 1902.
Hooton, a Classics PhD from the University of Wisconsin, then entered anthropology as an Oxford
Rhodes Scholar, under R. R. Marett, and the anatomist Arthur Keith. Harvard University hired
 Hooton in 1913; for the next decades, he trained most American physical anthropologists, beginning
with Harry L. Shapiro and Carleton S. Coon. As the leading US student of race in the 1930s, Earnest
Hooton struggled to differentiate “good” American physical anthropology from “bad” German
physical anthropology.[2] Nonetheless, despite that conflict of scientific interpretation, there was
much intellectual continuity between Germans and Americans, such as Eugen Fischer, Fritz Lenz,
and Erwin Baur.[3]In 1951, in an influential report, Sherwood Washburn, a Hooton alumnus, re-
invented the field with a “new physical anthropology”. [4] For the post–Second World War generation
of anthropologists, physical anthropology was transformed by withdrawing from the study of racial
typology to concentrate upon the study of human microevolution; away from classification, and
towards evolutionary process and history. Under Washburn’s lead, anthropology expanded to
comprehend paleoanthropology and primatology.[5] Consequently, contemporary anthropology is
methodologically diverse, comprehending the cognate fields of animal behavior, human genetics,
and medical anatomy, et cetera.

Applied anthropologists often work for nonacademic clients such as governments, development
agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), tribal and ethnic associations, advocacy
groups, social-service and educational agencies, and businesses. Ethnography and participant
observation are the applied anthropologist's primary research tools. They also use textual
analysis, survey research and other empirical methods to inform policy or to market products.

This stands in contrast to the purely academic realm of sociocultural anthropology, which may
be more concerned with creating theoretical models which correspond to its units of analysis,
e.g. social inequality, performance, exchange, relative ethic value, and so forth. Sometimes
research that falls within the "applied" field is differentiated from such research, which is thereby
termed "basic" anthropology.

Examples of questions that an applied anthropologist would attempt to solve might be:

 If an American buys diapers at 2 a.m. on a Saturday in a grocery store, what is likely to be their
next purchase?
 How can public health authorities promote condom use among members of a particular
subculture?
 How can anthropologists on Human Terrain Teams help the military identify enemy elements in
Iraq?
 What measures could be taken to make sponge diving safer for Greek sponge divers?
 Why do people migrate to XYZ place or from PQR place?

Applied Biological Anthropology

Research
Obesity

Despite a widespread public health campaign, obesity in developed countries is prevalent and continues
to increase. For this project, obtain data on the incidence of obesity in the United States and other
countries (both developed and developing) and describe the trends that you see.
Abstract: Biological anthropologists can contribute a unique perspective as well as technical
expertise to the diagnosis and classification of genetic disorders. Anthropometry has been used
with increasing frequency to characterize syndromes and to establish ranges of variation within
syndromes. The specific anthropometric-radiologic technique of metacarpophalangeal pattern
profile analysis has proven useful in discriminating individuals with the Prader-Labhart-Willi
(PLW) syndrome from unaffected persons. Analysis of these data also indicates a negative
correlation between age and Z-score transformations of individual hand bone lengths. These
findings sound a cautionary note to clinical investigators who would use the Z-score
transformation to standardize for age and sex. Problems encountered in the classification of
genetic syndromes afford many parallels with those faced by anthropologists in the classification
of living and fossil populations. The reliance on “key” traits and the necessity of focusing on
pedigree analysis results in a deemphasis of the total range of variation and typological thinking.
Application of numerical taxonomic techniques to the classification of the heterogeneous
connective tissue disease osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) illustrates the heuristic value of this
technique and points out the need to consider phenotypic overlap when defining typologies.
Clinical genetics affords just one example of an area in medicine where the unique training and
generalist perspective of the biological anthropologist is in demand. The decline in the
availability of positions in the traditional academic habitat for biological anthropologists makes it
imperative that graduate students be aware of alternatives and that they obtain training in the
practical skills which such alternatives will demand.

Claude Lévi-Strauss(28 November 1908 – 30 October 2009) was a French anthropologist and
ethnologist, and has been called the "father of modern anthropology". He argued that the "savage"
mind had the same structures as the "civilized" mind and that human characteristics are the same
everywhere. Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown (born 17 January 1881 in Birmingham - died 24
October 1955 in London) was an English social anthropologist who developed the theory of
Structural Functionalism, a framework that describes basic concepts relating to the social structure
of primitive civilizations. David Émile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 – November 15, 1917) was a French
sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is
commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science