The Cooper Hall of Anthropology

Your house contains hundreds of objects that, one day, may help anthropologists understand your cultural and biological heritage. The anthropological collections at the Utah Museum of Natural History focuses primarily on New World archeology and ethnography, and particularly on Intermountain prehistory. Over 750,000 archeological artifacts and 2,000 ethnographic objects help articulate our human experience.

Like the Museum, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Utah also began with a regional focus on archaeology and ethnography beginning in the 1900s under the influence of Byron Cummings and later Julian Steward and Jesse Jennings. The department continues to emphasize an empirical approach, but its theoretical and geographic perspectives have expanded over time. Faculty specialize in genetics, behavioral ecology, demography, hunter-gatherers, and evolutionary approaches to human behavior and focus their work primarily in Africa, Australia, New Guinea, the Middle East, and western North America.

While anthropology has traditionally been divided into several sub-fields, it has become a particularly integrated science at the University of Utah in recent years. Bringing together elements of biological sciences, mathematics, social sciences, and humanities, anthropology differs from these other fields in its attempt to synthesize knowledge about human experience.