Editing Anthropology (section)

===Basic trends===
There are several characteristics that tend to unite anthropological work. One of the central characteristics is that anthropology tends to provide a comparatively more [[Holism|holistic]] account of phenomena and tends to be highly empirical.<ref name="Hylland Eriksen 2004 p. 79"/> The quest for holism leads most anthropologists to study a particular place, problem or phenomenon in detail, using a variety of methods, over a more extensive period than normal in many parts of academia.

In the 1990s and 2000s, calls for clarification of what constitutes a culture, of how an observer knows where his or her own culture ends and another begins, and other crucial topics in writing anthropology were heard. These dynamic relationships, between what can be observed on the ground, as opposed to what can be observed by compiling many local observations remain fundamental in any kind of anthropology, whether cultural, biological, linguistic or archaeological.<ref>Rosaldo, Renato (1993). ''Culture and Truth: The remaking of social analysis''. Beacon Press. Inda</ref><ref>Xavier, John and Rosaldo, Renato (2007). ''The Anthropology of Globalization''. Wiley-Blackwell.</ref>

Biological anthropologists are interested in both human variation<ref>Jurmain, Robert; Kilgore, Lynn; Trevathan, Wenda and Ciochon, Russell L. (2007). ''Introduction to Physical Anthropology''. 11th ed. Wadsworth. chapters I, III and IV. {{ISBN|0-495-18779-8}}.</ref><ref>Wompack, Mari (2001). ''Being Human''. Prentice Hall. pp.&nbsp;11–20. {{ISBN|0-13-644071-1}}</ref> and in the possibility of human universals (behaviors, ideas or concepts shared by virtually all human cultures).<ref>Brown, Donald (1991). ''Human Universals''. McGraw Hill.</ref><ref>Roughley, Neil (2000). ''Being Humans: Anthropological Universality and Particularity in Transciplinary Perspectives''. Walter de Gruyter Publishing.</ref> They use many different methods of study, but modern population [[genetics]], [[participant observation]] and other techniques often take anthropologists "into the field," which means traveling to a community in its own setting, to do something called "fieldwork." On the biological or physical side, human measurements, genetic samples, nutritional data may be gathered and published as articles or monographs.

Along with dividing up their project by theoretical emphasis, anthropologists typically divide the world up into relevant time periods and geographic regions. Time periods are divided up into relevant cultural traditions based on material, such as the [[Paleolithic]] and the [[Neolithic]], of particular use in archaeology. Further cultural subdivisions according to tool types, such as [[Oldowan]], [[Mousterian]] or [[Levallois technique|Levalloisian]] help archaeologists and other anthropologists in understanding major trends in the past. Anthropologists and geographers share approaches to [[culture regions]] as well, since mapping cultures is central to both sciences. By making comparisons across cultural traditions (time-based) and cultural regions (space-based), anthropologists have developed various kinds of [[comparative method]], a central part of their science.