Yale University's Department of Anthropology has been home to some of the world's foremost social scientists in the fields of Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, Linguistic Anthropology, and Sociocultural Anthropology. While officially founded in 1937, the origins of anthropological research and teaching at Yale go back to work done within the Peabody Museum of Natural History (1866) and the Institute of Human Relations (1928). Today, the Department consists of three subdisciplines: Archaeology, Biological Anthropology, and Sociocultural Anthropology. The Department contains over 30 faculty and nearly 120 graduate students and undergraduate majors.

The Anthropology faculty is active and plays important roles in numerous national and international committees as well as in related programs at Yale. These include the The Whitney and Betty MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies at Yale, the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, the Peabody Museum of Natural History and the Program in Agrarian Studies. The Department maintains its own laboratories (YBAL and Reproductive Ecology) and sponsors numerous colloquia, seminars, lectures, and conferences that are open to all members of the Yale community.