Ethnography is the study of a culture through participant observation. Marshall Sahlins used the participant observation method and developed the theory of the original affluent society. He said that foragers are the original affluent society, because members of these societies spend less time working than members of so-called civilized societies, and thus have more time for leisure. Napoleon Chagnon has recently studied the Yanomamo using the participant observation method. Anthropologists use ethnology to compare ethnographic studies of different cultures to identify patterns in human behavior.
The study of linguistics is the study of language. Two important ideas in the study of linguistics are the concept of the tabula rasa, which was developed by John Locke, and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
Archaeologists typically study prehistory by reconstructing a society based on remains. A new subfield of archaeology, historical archaeology, however, deals with history. Lewis Binford and Gordon Willey are important American Archaeologists today.