Cross-Culturally Exploring the Concept of Shamanism
Jeffrey Vadala “The shaman is not merely a sick man or a madman; he is a sick man who has healed himself.” -Terence McKenna, The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens & the I Ching During the…
Category Archives: eHRAF Highlights
Does Stress Increase the Strength of Cultural Norms?
Carol R. Ember, Michele J. Gelfand, Joshua Conrad Jackson, and Tahlisa Brougham All societies have expectations about how people should behave. But some societies appear to have more rules than others, have more people who…
The Power and Potential of eHRAF: Cross-Cultural Research and Archaeology
Jeffrey Vadala Given that the archaeological record is often incomplete, how can archaeologists make reliable conclusions about human behavior in the past? Archaeologists employ a variety of approaches to this end, using statistical, interpretive, comparative…
![2019 HRAF Internship in Honor of Melvin Ember [CLOSED]](https://hraf.yale.edu/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/Photo-of-Melvin.jpg)
2019 HRAF Internship in Honor of Melvin Ember [CLOSED]
The Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University is pleased to announce a one-year internship in Melvin Ember’s name. Melvin Ember was President of HRAF from 1987 until his death in 2009. The intent…
HRAF 2018 in Review & 2019 Preview
By Francine Barone The New Year is underway, which means it’s time for our annual news and notes review. This post will summarize our highlights from the previous year as well as what you can…
New Year around the world
By Francine Barone As people throughout much of the Western world mark the end of another year by finalizing their New Year’s resolutions, it is a good time to reflect anthropologically on how others around the…
Dogs and the Hands That Feed: The Utility of Dogs in Hunter-Gatherer Societies
By Jeffrey Vadala Human relationships with dogs extend into the deep past, just as they strongly endure in myriad forms in the present. New research in Siberia indicates that humans may have established relationships with…
The HRAF Global Scholarship Application is Live!
As an organization dedicated to disseminating cultural information and research on human diversity, the Human Relations Area Files greatly values diversity in our membership base. We are therefore proud to present a new scholarship program,…
Shaman Lords, Spider Diviners, and Hoards: An Archaeology of the Objects We Bury
Jeffrey Vadala Throughout history, humans have collected and buried groups of objects together, whether for ritual purposes (e.g., offerings to the gods) or pragmatic reasons (e.g., for secret stores of food). Today, many cultural groups…
The Intelligent Crow: Exploring Human-Animal Relationships Cross-Culturally
eHRAF’s subject categories of ethnozoology (OCM identifier 825), mythology (773), and religious beliefs (770) were used to explore the topic of crow intelligence. With these OCM identifiers, a large variety of human-animal relationships can be…