HRAF 2019 in Review & 2020 Preview
Welcome to 2020! It’s time for our annual News & Notes recap and preview. This post will summarize our highlights from the previous year, as well as what you can expect to see from HRAF…
Tag Archives: Archaeology
Why Hunter-Gatherers have Fewer “F” and “V” Sounds
Damián Blasi at the University of Zurich and a research associate here at HRAF has just published a paper with colleagues in Science reporting significant differences in the frequency of “F” and “V” sounds in…
HRAF Global Scholarship Program 2019
As part of our philanthropic outreach efforts, the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) at Yale University is offering the HRAF Global Scholarship program which has been established with the goal of expanding access to eHRAF World…
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…
HRAF 2018 in Review & 2019 Preview
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…
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…
Special rates for 3- & 5-year HRAF memberships
Did you know that as a small, non-profit organization, Human Relations Area Files services over 500 academic member institutions from around the world? Anthropologists, archaeologists, social scientists, and cross-cultural researchers from these institutions benefit from…
Featured eHRAF teaching exercise: Comparison of prehistoric burial practices
This week’s featured eHRAF teaching exercise was produced in-house here at HRAF by Christiane Cunnar. Designed for classroom use or as a homework assignment, Exercise 2.3 Burial Practices: A world-wide comparison of burial practices in…
Featured Culture: Aztecs, cosmology, and ancient rituals in eHRAF
The Aztec Empire constituted the greatest empire in Mesoamerican prehistory, both territorially and demographically, extending from highland basins to coastal plains, valleys and lowland forests. The Mexica – as the Aztec people are known –…
Announcing: New look and features for Teaching eHRAF
If you haven’t yet browsed our open access collection of over 40 teaching exercises, now is a perfect time. Teaching eHRAF is a ready-made classroom companion offering sample syllabi for the eHRAF World Cultures and…