With its long-term perspective, archaeology also affords unique insight into processes of social change relevant to today's problems while greatly expanding our knowledge of human diversity. At the same time, it is through archaeological research that we can assess the significance of such one-time events as the invention of agriculture. Physical Anthropology Human evolution, adaptation, and biological diversity are the key concerns of physical anthropology. While physical anthropology focuses on the human organism, it differs from other biological sciences in its concern with what anthropologists call culture, which consists of socially transmitted patterns of learned behavior and meaning. Most physical anthropologists, therefore, make culture a cornerstone of their studies of human biology.
Human variability looks at biological diversity in contemporary human populations.
Paleoanthropology deals with the long-term evolutionary processes through which the human species emerged. Primatology, which is the main focus of physical anthropology faculty at the University of Texas, affords unique insights into the non-cultural, or instinctual bases of behavior in species closely related to our own, while placing human biology within the broader perspective of primate evolution. Social anthropology takes a holistic perspective, exploring the complex interrelationships of family and kinship structures, technology, economy, political organization, religion, personality, the arts, language, race and ethnicity, and other key aspects of social life in a given culture. Social anthropology is also comparative, in that these holistic accounts of specific cultures provide a basis for making general statements about social life and explaining differences. Traditionally, social anthropologists did their work in small, primitive communities, but in recent decades they have sampled the human condition in urban settings, developed countries, and have even studied institutions in their own cultures, such as hospitals and schools.