Many anthropologists believe that anthropology stands to gain from devoting greater attention to history and historical questions. A successful synthesis of anthropology and history would not be difficult to achieve for several reasons. First, the two disciplines share fundamentally similar subject matters. Anthropology is the exploration of the entire range of human social and cultural diversity; history is the science of man in time. Second, both disciplines have similar aims and concerns. Both anthropologists and historians are interested in the particular, the general, and the relationship between them. Although their methods reflect different disciplinary training styles and emphases, they both seek to make intelligible the interconnections among events, beliefs, institutions, and patterns of social relationships. Anthropology and history also both insist on viewing people, places, and events in their appropriate temporal and/or sociocultural contexts. Third, the processes by which the anthropologist and historian acquire and make sense of information are analogous, whether they confer with documents or observe and interview informants in their field work. (RM)