Environmental anthropology

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Environmental anthropology is a sub-discipline of anthropology that examines the complex relationships between humans and the environments which they inhabit.^[1] This takes many shapes and forms, whether it be examining the hunting/gathering patterns of humans tens of thousands of years ago, archaeological investigations of early agriculturalists and their impact on deforestation or soil erosion, or how modern human societies are adapting to climate change and other anthropogenic environmental issues. This sub-field of anthropology developed in the 1960s from cultural ecology as anthropologists borrowed methods and terminology from growing developments in ecology and applied them to understand human cultures.^[2]

Environmental anthropology is a growing sub-field of anthropology because the challenges of understanding and addressing human caused environmental problems like climate change, species extinctions, plastic pollution, and habitat destruction require an understanding of the complex cultural, political, and economic systems that have created these problems.