Prepared under the auspices of Yale University's Human Relations Area Files, this huge reference work contains 340 articles on every aspect of human culture and society. Although designed for use by cultural anthropologists, many of the topics extend far into archaeology, linguistics and biological anthropology. 310 expert authors write on topics ranging from optimal foraging theory to the Mead-Freeman controversy, from frameworks like cultural materialism to methods of data collection. Each article is followed by a bibliography valid up to the mid 1990s and the entries are extensively cross-referenced.