History and Anthropology: A Marriage Made in Heaven

Anthropology is a science of inquiries about the origins and continuities of the patterned differentiation of human beings into distinguishable groups. During the last hundred years, most such inquiries in academic anthropology could be organized under four headings, and in the U.S., these headings became the subfields of anthropology: physical anthropology; archaeology; linguistics; and cultural anthropology or ethnography. Each one of these subfields has a historical component. Anthropology is by its nature a historical form of inquiry, and history and anthropology can be mutually helpful in the pursuit of knowledge.