Given the broad reach of anthropology as the science of humankind, there
are times when the subject fragments into specialisms and times when
there is rapprochement. Rather than just seeing them as reactions to
each other, it is perhaps better to say that both tendencies co-exist
and that it is very much a matter of perspective as to which is dominant
at any moment. The perspective adopted by the contributors to this
volume is that some anthropologists have, over the last decade or so,
been paying considerable attention to developments in the study of
social and biological evolution and of material culture, and that this
has brought social, material cultural and biological anthropologists
closer to each other and closer to allied disciplines such as
archaeology and psychology.
A more eclectic anthropology once characteristic of an earlier age is
thus re-emerging. The new holism does not result from the merging of
sharply distinguished disciplines but from among anthropologists
themselves who see social organization as fundamentally a problem of
human ecology, and, from that, of material and mental creativity, human
biology, and the co-evolution of society and culture. It is part of a
wider interest beyond anthropology in the origins and rationale of human
activities, claims and beliefs, and draws on inferential or speculative
reasoning as well as 'hard' evidence. The book argues that, while
usefully borrowing from other subjects, all such reasoning must be
grounded in prolonged, intensive and linguistically-informed fieldwork
and comparison.
