What Do Anthropologists Mean When They Use the Term Biocultural ?

The term biocultural is often invoked as a unifying theme in a holistic vision of anthropology. To ascertain patterns in its use and meaning in current anthropological publications, we conducted a bibliometric review of the use of biocultural in AAA journals, Current Anthropology ( CA ), Annual Review of Anthropology ( ARA ), and in American Journal of Human Biology ( AJHB ) from 2000–2014. The term was found in 177 articles in the sample from AAA journals, CA , and ARA , and in 74 AJHB articles, representing approximately 3 percent of the total number of articles published in the anthropology journals and approximately 5 percent of those in AJHB from 2000–2014. The term biocultural most commonly referred to how the social environment affects human biology (75% in AAA/CA/ARA , 95% in AJHB ) and was topically aligned with health (46% in AAA/CA/ARA , 77% in AJHB ). Articles from biological and cultural subfields were evenly represented in the AAA/CA/ARA sample (37% and 36%, respectively). There was extensive variation in what the term biocultural described. Evolutionary theory or political economic analyses were employed in a minority of articles using the term biocultural . Currently there is no consensus on what criteria define biocultural , and there is wide variation in its use. [ biocultural, holism, bibliometric analysis ]