The Ethnographic Atlas (EA) sample contains over 1264 societies. George P. Murdock, its creator, intended the EA to be an “exhaustive” list of the world’s described societies. Like the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample (SCCS), the EA contains a specified time and (usually) place focus with a bibliography of source materials, and contains some coded variables (largely focusing on subsistence practices and social and political organization). Coded variables for the EA sample can be found in D-PLACE and downloaded. Researchers coding additional variables for this sample are expected to adhere to the specified time and place focus.

To facilitate research for those wanting to code their own variables using eHRAF World Cultures for the EA sample, HRAF staff have flagged those documents that, in HRAF’s judgment, provide an appropriate match to the time and place foci of the EA. Note that in almost all cases, eHRAF World Cultures contains many more documents than those flagged. This is because the HRAF collections try to cover multiple times and places to facilitate understanding of change of over and of regional variation.

We have indicated matches in multiple ways. First, we have provided information in the table below. Clicking on the ethnographer name and date will bring up the publication information page for the document (authentication is required for reading or searching the documents). Second, in the eHRAF World Cultures database itself, you can, after performing a search, narrow your results to the EA societies in eHRAF that have some matching documents. When you open the first results page, the documents that match are footnoted with “E1,” “E2,” and “E3.” As explained in the footnotes, an “E1” is considered a direct match. An “E2” is considered a partial match, usually because the document covers multiple time periods or multiple cultures. An “E3” footnote is occasionally given when the time or place is somewhat ambiguous and we urge some caution in using the source.

Table: Ethnographic Atlas Matches in eHRAF