In the United States, anthropology usually is considered to consist of four subdisciplines, or "subfields": archaeology (describing and understanding past human behavior by examining material remains), physical or biological anthropology (describing the evolution and modern physical variation of the human species), anthropological linguistics, and sociocultural anthropology. Most university departments of anthropology have faculty in three or four of these subdisciplines. Sociocultural anthropology often is called simply cultural anthropology in the United States, although a few academic programs use the term "social anthropology," the common designation in Europe. Some anthropologists identify applied anthropology as a fifth subfield, while others consider it part of sociocultural anthropology.

Anthropology is defined as the study of human commonalities and differences and expressly includes the entire temporal and geographic range of humankind in its scope. The database of the discipline is large, including prehistoric populations as well as every variety of contemporary...