The goal of this paper is to evaluate the contribution of the anthropological approach (AA) concurrently to Activity Theory (AT) in view of overarching questions about classroom use of technology for teaching and learning mathematics. I will do it first from a philosophical point of view, presenting the main notions of AA that have been used to address these questions, and then consider the conceptual roots and development of AA in comparison with those of AT. Then I will consider a particular research study for which a specific AT framework has been used, together with the AA notion of instrumented technique.