This work introduces new approaches to the theory and application of ethnomathematics. Ethnomathematics is a field of research focused on the study of different mathematics, which are specific for each (sub-)culture.

First, the author gives a detailed description of a new historiography of ethnomathematics, showing that this field of research has been studied and practiced since the 1920s, when Ewald Fettweis pursued his first research on this subject. Two other important forerunners of ethnomathematics are, according to the author, Otto Raum and Raymond Wilder.

The author proposes a new approach for the theory of ethnomathematics, namely a supplementary interdisciplinary theory that corresponds to the intersection of mathematics, its history and education, and cultural anthropology, ethnology, ethnography and ethnoscience.

Two innovating field researches, undertaken separately in Mozambique and Brazil, are presented by the author. These contribute to the consolidation of the supplementary interdisciplinarity of this field of ethnomathematics.