Atlas of World Cultures

George Peter Murdock

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 1981
• eBook ISBN: 9780822976318
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The publication of Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas in 1967 marked the first time that descriptive information on the peoples of the world—primitive, historical, and contemporary—had been systematically organized for the purposes of comparative research. In this volume, Murdock has completely revised this work, selecting 563 societies that are most fully and accurately described in ethnographic literature. The identification of each society gives its geographical coordinates and date, its identifying number in the Ethnographic Atlas, and an indication of whether it is included in the Human Relations Area Files or the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. In addition, bibliographical references are offered for each society.

The information and suggested research techniques will be of value to comparativists in anthropology, history, political science, psychology and sociology. Most importantly, it offers a simple method fro choosing a valid sample of the world's known societies for cross-cultural research.

Table of contents

• Contents
• 1. Introduction
• 2. African Peoples
• 3. Circum-Mediterranean Peoples
• 4. East Asian Peoples
• 5. Peoples of the Insular Pacific
• 6. Peoples of North America
• 7. Peoples of Central and South America
• 8. Codes
• 9. The Coded Ethnographic Data
• 10. Summary and Conclusions
• Index