[whswhs]

The skill definitions in GURPS seem largely to reflect American academic practice. In this sociology and anthropology are both the study, at a somewhat theoretical level, of entire societies: sociology of industrialized societies that collect statistics; anthropology of nonindustrial societies that don't collect statistics. Though anthropology also includes the study of human and primate evolution, which is one of its interpretative paradigms—human cultures represent "adaptations"—and that doesn't seem to be part of the GURPS model.

There isn't really much of a skill option for the study of large, city-building, state-governed societies that aren't industrialized, but then there isn't in academia either; so far as they are studied it's by historians. But history seems to be mainly the study of concrete events and situations through documentary evidence, whereas archaeology is the same through material relics—the two slightly overlap when the relics are ancient texts carved in stone that haven't yet been fully deciphered. Both of these are separate from the methods of sociology (largely statistics) and anthropology (largely ethnographic fieldwork). Though history has lately picked up on using statistics—derived more from economics, in the form of cliometrics, than from sociology—and there are archaeologists who use anthopological concepts as an interpretative paradigm for relics. There's even been a little work on including statistical methods in anthropology, as in estimates of the frequency of homicide in tribal societies.

None of which has that much to do with the use of such skills in GURPS. But I really haven't run a campaign that called for them. Certainly they don't exist in actual premodern societies such as turn up in fantasy campaigns a lot.

Bill Stoddard