The publication of Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas in 1967 marked the first time that descriptive information on the peoples of the world—primitive, historical, and contemporary—had been systematically organized for the purposes of comparative research. In this volume, Murdock has completely revised this work, selecting 563 societies that are most fully and accurately described in ethnographic literature. The identification of each society gives its geographical coordinates and date, its identifying number in the Ethnographic Atlas, and an indication of whether it is included in the Human Relations Area Files or the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. In addition, bibliographical references are offered for each society.

The information and suggested research techniques will be of value to comparativists in anthropology, history, political science, psychology and sociology. Most importantly, it offers a simple method fro choosing a valid sample of the world’s known societies for cross-cultural research.

Twenty four essays cover a broad range of topics in cultural anthropology, and represent the best writings of George Peter Murdock and reveal his theoretical orientation and his many landmark contributions to the field.

An important contribution to medical anthropology, this work defines the principal causes if illness that are reported throughout the world, distinguishing those involving natural causation from the more widely prevalent hypotheses advancing supernatural explanations.