North American Indian Anthropology : Essays on Society and Culture

These essays explore the blending of structural and historical approaches to American Indian anthropology that characterises the persepective developed by the late Fred Eggan and his students at the University of Chicago.

Included are studies of kinship and social organisation, politics, religion, law, ethnicity and art.

Many of the essays reflect Eggan's method of controlled comparison, a tool for reconstructing social and cultural change over time.

Together these essays make substantial descriptive contributions to American Indian anthropology, presenting contemporary interpretations of diverse groups from the Hudsons Bay Inuit in the north to the Highland Maya of Chiapas in the south.

The collection can serve as an introduction to Native American social and cultural anthropology for readers interested in the dynamics of Indian social life.