Selection in anthropology strives to include all areas of anthropological research, with special emphasis in materials supporting the courses and research specialties of Tulane students and faculty. This includes publications relevant to all the major subdisciplines of anthropology, as well as area studies relevant to anthropological concerns.
- The Physical Anthropology General Collection: In addition to works on method and theory, there are emphases on forensic anthropology, biological anthropology, human evolution, human and primate adaptation, and variability, skeletal biology, paleoanthropology, paleopathology and human morphology. Primate studies focus on human and primate evolution, observational and research methods with non-human primates, primate behavior, ecology, and biology.
- The Archaeology General Collection: In addition to works about method and theory, there are emphases on Old World prehistory, North American prehistory, human origins, geoarchaeology, paleoecology, subsistence studies, settlement studies, zooarchaeology, and ceramic and lithic analyses.
- The Anthropological Linguistics Collection: Linguistics study in anthropology focuses on selected areas of linguistics scholarship including historical linguistics, sociolinguistics, structural linguistics, semantics, phonology, morphology, discourse analysis, and psycholinguistics. There is little emphasis on texts addressing single languages generally, but there is interest in African and Native American languages particularly. Texts addressing single languages or research or curricular interests of linguistics faculty outside the Anthropology Department are generally bought with book funds assigned to those departments. Texts more generally addressing anthropological linguistics or topics of more general interest to linguists in a number of departments are purchased with anthropology funds.
- The General Cultural Anthropology Collection: In addition to works relevant to method and theory, there are emphases on human ecology, ethnobotany, ethnohistory, ethnopsychology, folklore, and cultural dynamics. Ethnologies and ethnographies are collected, with some emphases on African and Asian cultures. However, no culture areas are excluded from the collection; thematic and methodological interests are considered as important as geographic area when choosing titles for inclusion in the collection.
