Anthropology

Welcome

Hi there! This guide is designed to assist you in conducting research and discovering resources in anthropology.
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Reference sources: Encyclopedias, Handbooks

Online Databases

Search many sources at once! | Indexes, abstracts & full text

Anthropology Plus This link opens in a new window
This resource is the combination of Anthropology Index and Anthropological Literature. Provides extensive worldwide indexing of journal articles, reports, commentaries, edited works, and obituaries in the fields of social, cultural, physical, biological, and linguistic anthropology, ethnology, archaeology, folklore, material culture, and interdisciplinary studies. Covers over 2500 journals, 19th century to the present. Updated quarterly.
AnthroSource This link opens in a new window
Developed by the American Anthropological Association (AAA), AnthroSource brings anthropological material online to scholars and the public.
Project Muse This link opens in a new window
Provides access to scholarly journals and eBooks in the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Dates of coverage varies per title.
JStor This link opens in a new window
A collection of full-text articles from over 3000 scholarly journals, many dating from the nineteenth-century to the last 4 or 5 years. A growing number of titles are available through the current issues, as part of their "Current Scholarship Program". Select Advanced Search to strategically search amongst 45 disciplines. Choose PDF from within JStor to properly view and print articles. For convenience, JStor is now searchable on Facebook.
Humanities & Social Sciences Index Retrospective (H.W. Wilson) This link opens in a new window
Indexes articles from English-language magazines and academic journals in a wide range of interdisciplinary fields. Covers 1907 to 1984.
Social Sciences Citation Index (Web of Science) This link opens in a new window
Index to content from core journals in all areas of the social sciences. Provides lists of sources cited, plus publications citing the original article. Also known as SSCI. Covers 1900 to the present.

Google Scholar
Provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research.

Social Explorer This link opens in a new window
Explore over 500,000 data indicators and over 220 years of data for the United States, including all Decennial Censuses, American Community Surveys and many other datasets. The easy-to-use web interface lets users create maps and reports to illustrate, analyze, and understand demography and social change.
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Clarivate Analytics' premier citation databases in the sciences (physical, life and social) and arts & humanities. Search for articles that cite a known author or work or by standard search queries. Covers 1864 to the present.

Specific Journals

Journal of Archaeological Science
Journal of Anthropological Research
American Journal of Biological Anthropology
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(previously Journal of Physical Anthropology)
Cultural Anthropology
American Anthropologist

Digital Primary Sources

AM Explorer (formerly Adam Matthew Digital) This link opens in a new window
Collections spanning the social sciences and humanities, developed in collaboration with leading libraries and archives. Contains millions of pages of unique primary source content and hundreds of videos.
Gale Primary Sources (formerly Artemis) This link opens in a new window
An integrated research experience that allows for seamless searching across multiple databases. Includes subject indexing and a range of cutting edge interactive tools. Users are able to search databases individually, as a group or any combination of our subscribed databases, including Archives Unbound, the 17th and 18th Century Burney Collection, Eighteenth Century Collections Online, Indigenous Peoples of North America, Nineteenth Century Collections Online: Asia and the West, Slavery and Antislavery: A Transnational Archive, The Sunday Times, and more.
Indigenous Peoples of North America, Part I (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
A robust, diverse, informative source on the historical experiences, cultural traditions and innovations, and political status of indigenous peoples in the United States and Canada. Researchers will explore the impact of invasion and colonization on Indigenous Peoples in North America, and the intersection of Indigenous and European histories and systems of knowledge through the use of manuscripts, monographs, newspapers, photographs, motion pictures, images of artwork, and more. Content has been sourced from both American and Canadian institutions and has received direct-from-source permission to digitize newspapers from various tribes and organizations. This archive also features indigenous language materials, including dictionaries, religious texts, and primers.
Slavery and Anti-Slavery: A Transnational Archive (Gale Primary Sources) This link opens in a new window
Archival collections on the history of slavery in America and the rest of the world sourced from more than 60 libraries at institutions such as the Amistad Research Center, Bibliothèque nationale de France, the National Archives, Oberlin College, Oxford University, the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, and Yale University. F&M subscribes only to the following collections:
Part 3, The Institution of Slavery (1492-1888)
Part 4, The Age of Emancipation
Part 3 explores the inner workings of slavery from 1492 to 1888. Through legal documents, plantation records, first-person accounts, newspapers, government records, and other primary sources, this collection reveals how enslaved people struggled against the institution. These rare works explore slavery as a legal and labor system, the relationship between slavery and religion, freed slaves, the Shong Massacre, the Demerara insurrection, and more.
Part 4 includes numerous rare documents related to emancipation in the United States, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean. This collection supports the study of many areas, including activities of the federal government in dealing with former slaves and the Freedmen's Bureau, views of political parties and post-war problems with the South, documents of the British and French government on the slave trade, reports from the West Indies and Africa, and other topics.

Additional online collections

American Folklife Center: the Library of Congress
American Museum of Natural History - Anthropology Databases
Over 250,000 ethnographic and archaeological objects representing the peoples of the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and the Pacific Islands have been digitally imaged and are accessible online.
Cal Academy Anthropology Collection Database
The permanent research collection of the Department of Anthropology consists of more than 16,000 objects, most of which are ethnographic. These pieces originate from around the globe, documenting the diversity of human cultures and the ways in which we humans have adapted to Earth's varying environments. Current strengths of the collection are holdings from the U.S. Southwest and the Pacific Islands, and basketry from California
F&M College Archives and Special Collections
Field Museum Anthropology Collections
Library of Congress Digital Collections
National Archeological Database
Phillips Museum Permanent Collection
The collection consists of fine art, historic artifacts, furniture, decorative arts and material culture that encompass both local and global perspectives. The collection serves as a teaching resource for faculty across the curriculum and provides students unique opportunities to engage in undergraduate research projects that use original objects as gateways for inquiry into social, cultural and scientific investigation.

Streaming Media

Kanopy This link opens in a new window
Kanopy has more than 26,000 films in its collection - including leading producers such as Criterion Collection, The Great Courses, New Day Films, California Newsreel, Kino Lorber, PBS, BBC, First Run Features, The Video Project, Media Education Foundation, Documentary Educational Resources, and more. Kanopy’s viewing platform makes it easy to watch, share and discuss films across our campus and at your own convenience.
Academic Video Online (AVON) This link opens in a new window
Academic Video Online delivers more than 64,000 titles spanning the widest range of subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more. More than 17,000 titles are exclusive to Alexander Street. Curated for the educational experience, the massive depth of content and breadth of content-types (such as documentaries, films, demonstrations, etc.) in Academic Video Online makes it a useful resource.
Docuseek This link opens in a new window
Stream essential independent, social-issue and environmental films. All films must be individually licensed by the College Library.
Films on Demand This link opens in a new window
Comprehensive, curriculum-focused videos providing unlimited access to more than 40,000 full-length videos from National Geographic, Films for the Humanities & Sciences, HBO, PBS, BBC Worldwide Learning, and more.