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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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 World Cultures or…
“Youth must go, ah yes. But youth is only being in a way like it might be an animal…But it itties in a straight line and bangs straight into things bang bang and it cannot…
We are pleased to share information about the Human Relations Area Files’ collaboration with D-PLACE, the Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment. D-PLACE is an expandable and open-access database that brings together a dispersed…
The Inka tradition extends from 800 to 400 BP. The original Inka homeland was the Cuzco valley of south-central Peru, but the Inka Empire eventually extended along the Andes from Columbia to northern Argentina and…
Over 400 cultures are represented across our collections in the eHRAF World Cultures and eHRAF Archaeology databases. Did you know that you can browse our databases by country? Some countries in the world contain a…