HRAF 2017 in Review & 2018 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…
Tag Archives: research
HRAF Research report: Do natural hazards increase cultural “tightness”?
HRAF President, Carol Ember, has contributed this post reporting on her ongoing research into natural hazards and cultural “tightness”. Some societies appear to have strong and clearly defined expectations for how to behave in many…
Burning questions: evidence for off-site fire use by hunter-gatherers in eHRAF Archaeology
By Francine Barone An insightful publication by Fulco Scherjon, Corrie Bakels, Katharine MacDonald, and Wil Roebroeks in the June 2015 issue of Current Anthropology sheds new light on present-day and historical fire setting practices among…
2017 HRAF Internship in Honor of Melvin Ember
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…
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…
Cross-Cultural Resources for Teaching & Research
HRAF is pleased to announce the release of our two latest resources for teaching and research. The first, Explaining Human Culture (just launched in a beta version at hraf.yale.edu/ehc), is a publicly accessible database containing information on…
HRAF Research: Natural Hazards and Cultural Transformations
How often do events have to occur for humans to plan for them? Do unpredictable hazards lead to different cultural transformations than do more predictable hazards? Under what conditions are contingency plans overwhelmed in the…