How does the relationship between gender and power vary cross-culturally? According to Forbes, Angela Merkel tops the list of “world’s most powerful women“, with Hillary Clinton and Melinda Gates labelled the second and third most…
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…
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)
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…
From pop culture to evolutionary psychology, we have come to take kissing for granted as universally desirable among humans and inseparable from other aspects of affection and intimacy. However, a recent article in American Anthropologist…
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 expect to see…
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 globe observe the…
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…
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,…
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…