Board Meeting 2018: New Directions
Among the many highlights of the meeting, Matt Roth in IT offered a demonstration of new HRAF functions for saving searches and notes that the IT team (including Doug Black, Leon Doyon, and Fran Barone)…
Category Archives: Feature
Hunter-Gatherer Resources from HRAF
By Francine Barone Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) has an ever-expanding collection of resources on hunter-gatherers and foragers. Indeed, hunter-gathering is one of the most popular subsistence types in the eHRAF databases. This post will…
Our 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,…
A Heartfelt Welcome to Our Newest Members!
This year, HRAF welcomes new member institutions from across the world—with universities in Turkey, France, and Canada.
Dwellings: Function, Symbolism, and Landscape
People live and dwell within in a variety of constructed and unconstructed places that shape their existence. Dwellings vary enormously in their size, shape, and construction, and anthropological studies demonstrate that dwellings (and landscapes) dramatically…
Songs Across Cultures
Do songs share certain forms across the world? If you hear a song sung in an unfamiliar language, in a rhythm you’ve never heard before, can you still understand what it means? In a cross-cultural…
Explaining Human Culture: Altered States of Consciousness
Carol R. Ember has authored a summary of cross-cultural knowledge about Altered States of Consciousness for HRAF’s open access resource Explaining Human Culture. Nearly all societies are known to engage in practices that lead to…
Carved in Stone: Prehistoric Representative Art
In eHRAF Archaeology, you will find a collection of descriptive texts for prehistoric archaeological traditions from around the world. All of these texts are indexed with subjects based on the Outline of Cultural Materials (OCM), a vast…
Human Relations Area Files Timeline: 1949 – Present
FRAN BARONE / 17 SEP 2015 For over 60 years, Human Relations Area Files has served the educational community and contributed to an understanding of world cultures by assembling, indexing, and providing access to primary…
Sample syllabi and classroom exercises in Teaching eHRAF
By Francine Barone Educators: Did you know that the HRAF website contains an open access collection of over 50 teaching exercises (sample syllabi) for classroom use that include questions and class assignments based on eHRAF…