THE ETHNOGRAPHIC SAMPLE presented here began as a list of 226 societies, or cultunits (Naroll et al. 1970), that fulfilled four requirements: (1) They had been described by an ethnographer who reportedly lived among them for at least a year. (2) That ethnographer claimed a working knowledge of the native language. (3) That ethnographer published a body of ethnographic publications-an oeuvre-totalling at least 40 pages and containing at least two pages on each of at least 10 of the 79 basic categories of the Outline of Cultural Materials (Murdock et al. 1961). (4) The society in question lacked a native written literature. Published with the list was a special reply form calling for additions and corrections. The 64 responses received resulted in the deletion of two cultunits, Javanese and Caribou Eskimo, from the list; the addition of 49 new cultunits, making a new total of 273; and the expansion of the bibliography from 259 to 535 items, with the addition of 73 new authors (oeuvres) (Table 1). Neither list attempts a comprehensive bibliography of the societies listed; such bibliographies are already available for most of the world in the regional ethnographic bibliographies discussed in O'Leary (1970). The revised list does comprise the chief writings of ethnographers whose body of works satisfies our first three requirements-a list not elsewhere obtainable. We are indebted to our correspondents for a number of minor corrections in the original list; for example, three publications were dropped as not in fact meeting the stated requirements. All additions and corrections used are acknowledged in Table 2. We also received a number of suggestions we coul, not use. Many of the additions suggested did na in fact meet our requirements, and often this wa evident from the statements made by the respondenThere were several critiques of our whole entei prise. The authors of some of these critiques di, not wish them to be published; others are publishe, in this issue (pp. 141-42) together with our reply. The present list we suppose to be substantiall complete-that is to say, to include perhaps 80-909 of the qualified societies. This supposition implie that there may be 30 to 60 societies yet overlookec Furthermore, each year, new societies become eligibl as new qualified works are published. Accordingl) we have undertaken to publish supplements annuall or biennially, as new information comes in. C2 readers are therefore invited to contribute furthe suggestions for additions or corrections. We especiall invite readers to tell us about their own fieldwor and publications. As Table 1 and Figure 1 show, the regional coverag of our sample is uneven. Sub-Saharan Africa is mos heavily represented, Eurasia most poorly. Notabl gaps in particular regions include Central Mexic, (where Aztecs are ineligible because of a native writtei literature), the Caucasus, and Central Asia. At leas four factors may account for these inequalities o coverage. First, a high proportion of the peoples o Eurasia are ineligible because they have native writtel literatures. Second, we received no reply forms fron Eastern Europe or the Far East; we suspect that thern may be much literature in Russian, Chinese, o
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Jan 1, 1991
Susan E Bell 
