Academic Resources
This page contains a list of primarily anthropological, but also general social science resources—books, papers, films, and other relevant materials—that I consider informative, or have otherwise enjoyed. I do not necessarily endorse everything in these—or any—works other than my own, but I consider everything on here worth checking out. Links are offered where materials are publicly available. This list will likely be expanded considerably in the future.
Book recommendations
I have broken these recommendations up into categories based on similarities these works share in terms of modes of analysis/theoretical framework and time.
Early Comparative (1890’s-1950’s)
Teutonic Mythology (1835) by Jacob Grimm
The History of Human Marriage (1891) by Edward Westermarck
Slavery as an Industrial System (1900) by H.J. Nieboer
Primitive Secret Societies (1908) by Hutton Webster
Totemism and Exogamy [volumes I-IV] (1910) by James Frazer
Our Primitive Contemporaries (1934) by George Peter Murdock
Early Quantitative (1940’s-1970’s)
Social Structure (1949) by George Peter Murdock
The Status of Women in Preindustrial Societies (1978) by Martin King Whyte
Late Comparative (1970’s-Today)
Manhood in the Making (1990) by David Gilmore
Sick Societies (1992) by Robert B. Edgerton
The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers (1995) by Robert L. Kelly
Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe (2012) by Ian Armit
The Creation of Inequality (2012) by Kent Flannery and Joyce Marcus
The Power of Ritual in Prehistory (2018) by Brian Hayden
Late Quantitative (1980’s-Today)
Constructing Frames of Reference: An Analytical Method for Archaeological Theory Building Using Ethnographic and Environmental Data Sets (2001) by Lewis Binford
Papers
Glowacki, L. & Wrangham, R. 2015. Warfare and reproductive success in a tribal population. PNAS.
Knauft, B. 1987. Reconsidering Violence in Simple Human Societies. Current Anthropology.
Marlowe, F. 2005. Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution. Evolutionary Anthropology.
Singh, M. 2018. The cultural evolution of shamanism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
Smuts, B. 1992. Male aggression against women: an evolutionary perspective. Human Nature.
Walker, R.S. et al. 2011. Evolutionary History of Hunter-Gatherer Marriage Practices. PLoS One
20th Century Ethnography
The life of the Copper Eskimos (1922) by Diamond Jenness
The Tiwi of North Australia (1960) by CWM Hart and Arnold Pilling
Tiwi wives: a study of the women of Melville Island, North Australia (1971) by Jane Goodale
Chronicle of the Guayaki Indians (1972) by Pierre Clastres
Women of the Forest (1974) by Yolanda and Ryan Murphy
The !Kung of the Nyae Nyae (1976) by Lorna Marshall
Drama and Power in a Hunting Society: The Selk'nam of Tierra del Fuego (1981) by Anne Chapman
Masked Rituals of the Kodiak Archipelago (1995) by Dominique Desson
Ache Life History (1996) by Kim Hill and Ana Magdalena Hurtado
The Cassowary’s Revenge (1997) by Donald Tuzin
21st Century Ethnography
Forest hunter-gatherers and their world: a study of the Mbendjele Yaka pygmies of Congo-Brazzaville and their secular and religious activities and representations (2002) by Jerome Lewis
The Hadza (2010) by Frank Marlowe
Cross-Cultural Volumes (1980’s-Today)
Rituals of Manhood (1982) edited by Gilbert Herdt
Gender in Amazonia and Melanesia: An Exploration of the Comparative Method (2001) edited by Thomas Gregor and Donald Tuzin
Human Behavioral Ecology/Sociobiology (1980’s-Today)
Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of Human History (1983) by Laura Betzig
Homicide (1988) by Martin Daly and Margo Wilson
The Origin of War: The Evolution of a Male-Coalitional Reproductive Strategy (1995) by J.M.G. van der Dennen.
Why Sex Matters: A Darwinian Look at Human Behavior (2000) by Bobbi S. Low
Adaptation and Human Behavior (2000) edited by Lee Cronk, Napoleon Chagnon, and William Irons
Mammalian Behavioral Ecology/Primatology (1980’s-Today)
Primeval Kinship (2008) by Bernard Chapais
Mammal Societies (2016) by Tim Clutton-Brock
Chimpanzees and Human Evolution (2017) edited by Martin Mueller, Richard Wrangham, and David Pilbeam
General Social Science/History/Biography
The Campaigns of Napoleon (1966) by David G. Chandler
Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook (1968) by Edward Luttwak
Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years (1994) by Elizabeth Wayland Barber
Understanding Early Civilizations (2003) by Bruce Trigger.
Codes of the Underworld (2009) by Diego Gambetta
Ethnographic Films
The Hunters (1958) Part 1 and Part 2
Dead Birds (1963) —12 minute clip
—The book Gardens of War (1968) by Robert Gardner, the anthropologist who made the film, is also worth checking out.
A Man Called “Bee”: Studying the Yanomamo (1975)
Fictionalized ethnographic films
In The Land of the Headhunters (1914)
Nanook of the North (1922)
Cannibal Tours (1988)
The Human Systems and Behavior Lab
Omo Valley Culture and Behavior Project
Cross-Cultural Databases
D-PLACE – Database of Places, Language, Culture, and Environment