In sociocultural anthropology and

archaeology Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsc ...

, homology is a type of

analogy Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ...

whereby two human beliefs, practices, or artifacts are separated by time and/or place but share similarities due to some underlying factor, whether

genetics Genetics is the study of genes, genetic variation, and heredity in organisms.Hartl D, Jones E (2005) It is an important branch in biology because heredity is vital to organisms' evolution. Gregor Mendel, a Moravian Augustinian friar work ...

historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

connection, psychological

archetype The concept of an archetype (; ) appears in areas relating to behavior, historical psychology, and literary analysis. An archetype can be any of the following: # a statement, pattern of behavior, prototype, "first" form, or a main model that ...

, or otherwise. This type of homology is the counterpart of biologic homology in physical anthropology, whereby an anatomic structure is shared through descent from a common ancestor. The concept was explored by the American archaeologist William Duncan Strong in his direct historical approach to

archaeological theory Archaeological theory refers to the various intellectual frameworks through which archaeologists interpret archaeological data. Archaeological theory functions as the application of philosophy of science to archaeology, and is occasionally referred ...

. It is important in

structural anthropology Structural anthropology is a school of sociocultural anthropology based on Claude Lévi-Strauss' 1949 idea that immutable deep structures exist in all cultures, and consequently, that all cultural practices have homologous counterparts in other ...

in particular but also in sociocultural anthropology in general.

See also