Field primatology is one area of anthropology in which a classical cross-disciplinary approach is thriving (Nature 470, 166–168; 2011).

Field primatologists search the archaeological record of tool-using primates to gain insight into their cultures and traditions. Similarly, researchers of primate communication have set up a linguistic framework to investigate its intricacies in the context of the evolution of human language and music.

Like Jane Goodall and Birute Galdikas, whose studies on the great apes could read as ethnographies of a human group, field primatologists embrace long-term participant observation, a hallmark of social anthropology.

With the decline of natural forests, primate populations are nearly all intimately linked with their human neighbours. Field primatologists study their interactions, balancing the need for primate conservation with the cultural practices of the humans on whom the animals depend.

They advise on issues such as bushmeat hunting, the pet trade and the evolution of diseases that affect both human and non-human primates. They join cultural anthropologists and local people in examining data on past distributions and recent local extinctions of non-human primates and other animals.

In short, field primatology is successfully retaining and expanding the spirit of anthropology.