ABSTRACT
Historians and anthropologists have one thing in common: they both make a study of other cultures. Whereas the former focus on people in the past, the latter usually study people of other countries or of other ethnic groups. Both historians and anthropologists face similar problems of potential misrepresentation due to cultural distance. Historians should beware of anachronism, the tendency to account for past phenomena in terms of concepts and values of their own time, and anthropologists should avoid the pitfalls of ethnocentrism, the often subconscious tendency to form an interpretation of behaviour and phenomena in other cultures using the values and norms of one’s own culture as a yardstick. These two disciplines could learn from each other by exchanging ideas on and experiences with anachronism and ethnocentrism.
