FAQ

To do anthropological fieldwork, do you have to travel to another country and speak another language?
No. Traditionally, anthropologists studied nonindustrial, small-scale societies that frequently spoke a language different from the researcher and lived in a place distant from the researchers home country. However, while that kind of fieldwork continues, there is a lot of anthropological fieldwork now conducted in large, industrialized western, societies. So no, not all anthropological field work requires long-distance travel or the knowledge of a foreign language.

Who pays for anthropological fieldwork?
Several different agencies fund anthropological fieldwork. Some agencies are part of the federal government, like the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Fulbright-Hays, and the Fulbright IIE while other funding agencies are private nonprofit organizations like the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. Funding is not given out to everyone who asks. Researchers submit grant proposals that explain the question to be investigated, where the field work will take place, what methods will be used to collect data, and why the researcher writing the proposal is well suited to carry out the proposed research.

Do archaeological anthropologists dig up dinosaur bones?
No. Archaeological anthropologists study past human societies and since humans evolved long after the dinosaurs went extinct, archaeological anthropologists do not dig up dinosaur bones. Paleontologists, researchers who do study dinosaurs, do excavate bones out of the ground, but they do not study human cultures.

Do archaeological anthropologists do anything other than dig up sites?
While a large part of archaeological fieldwork involves digging, an equally important thing archaeological anthropologists do is systematic survey. Archaeological anthropologists use systematic survey to locate sites and estimate their size and approximate age. While excavating, archaeological anthropologists spend a lot of time in one place carefully digging through the cultural and natural layers of a site. However, systematic survey requires archaeological anthropologists to move over a large area while documenting sites.