Jerry Bello, age 15. of Barre, Vt., for his question:

JUST WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY?

Anthropology is the study of human beings from a biological, social and humanistic perspective. The field is generally divided into two major areas: physical anthropology and sociocultural anthropology.

Physical anthropology deals with the biological evolution and the physiological adaptations of humans while sociocultural anthropology concerns the ways in which people live in society    that is, the ways in which their language, culture and customs develop.

Anthropology is fundamentally cross cultural. Most early anthropological research studied non European peoples and cultures, but a great deal of recent research has focused on modern settings.

Anthropology emerged as a distinct field of study in the mid 19th century. In North America the founder of the discipline was a man named Lewis Henry Morgan, who did major research on the Iroquoian Confederacy.

Morgan later set out a general theory of cultural evolution as a gradual progression from savagery to barbarism to civilization. Barbarism was marked by simple domestication of animals and plants while civilization began with the invention of the alphabet.

In Europe the founding figure was a British scholar named Edward Taylor, who elaborated a theory of human evolution with special concentration on the origins of religion.

Applied anthropology began in the 19th century with such organizations as the Aborigines Protection Society (1837) and the Ethnological Society of Paris (1838). These societies worked to arouse the European conscience against such cruelties as the vast inhumanity of the slave trade and the slaughter of aboriginal peoples in Austrialia and the Americas.

Physical anthropology, a major area of study and experimentation, is primarily concerned with human evolution, human biology and the study of other primates.

Anthropology in the 1980s is increasingly an applied science, as researchers concentrate on social issues in areas such as health care, education, evironmental protection and urban development.

Many anthropologists are now employed by government agencies, research corporations, Indian tribal governments and health care facilities and such fieldwork is carried out in complex cultural sciences  ¬school systems, citywide health systems, large scale agricultural development programs and muiticommunity rural regions.

The shift to the study of complex, multicultural systems and the increase in quantifield research methods have led to the need for team research.

Another significant trend is to work more closely with community people    ethnic organizations, tribal governments, neighborhood health clinics, migrant labor organizations, women's groups and other special interes groups    whose activities require up to date quantitive and descriptive data.