Chapter 2 discusses how anthropologists gather information. All of the subfields of anthropology conduct fieldwork in some form to gather information, each subfield may use different methods of conducting research.

The concept of working in “the field” was traditionally based on the practice of traveling to distant regions to study other cultures within their native environmental contexts. In recent decades, “the field” has broadened to include diverse settings such as one’s hometown (as in urban anthropology), the Internet (visual or virtual anthropology), or collections in university archives and…

artifacts — objects that are portable and show evidence of human cultural activity; for example, bones that show evidence of drawings sketched on them, stone tools, pottery, etc. cross-cutting relationship — a principle in geology and archaeology that suggests that a geologic or cultural feature that cuts across another feature is the more recently deposited of the two. features — cultural structures found at an archaeological site that are not movable or portable, such as parts of a temple, altars, tombs, etc. law of superposition — the geological principle of stratigraphy that assumes that materials, normally rock layers, found beneath other materials are older that the materials on top.