1980s in anthropology

Events

• "Turkana Boy" is discovered

• The Human Genome Project is launched

• The National Museum of the American Indian is founded in the U.S.

Publications

• Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali, by Clifford Geertz
• The Devil and Commodity Fetishism in South America, by Michael Taussig

• In Vain I Tried To Tell You: Essays in Native American Ethnopoetics, by Dell Hymes
• Nisa: The Life and Words of a Kung Woman, by Marjorie Shostak

• Europe and the People Without History by Eric Wolf

• Local Knowledge: further essays in interpretive anthropology by Clifford Geertz

• Muelos: A Stone Age Superstition about Sexuality, by Weston La Barre

• Sweetness And Power : The Place Of Sugar In Modern History, by Sidney Mintz

• Writing Culture, ed. by James Clifford and George E. Marcus

• Donald Brown's Hierarchy, History, and Human Nature was published.

• Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going, by Marvin Harris

Deaths

• Gregory Bateson
• Johanes Nicolaisen

• Carleton Coon
• Marvin Opler

• Meyer Fortes
• Herge Kleivan
• Carobeth Laird
• Victor Turner

• Michel Foucault
• Audrey Richards

• Karl-Gustav Izikowitz
• George Peter Murdock
• Barbara Myerhoff

• Morton Fried
• Elman Service

• Edmund Leach

Awards

• Margaret Mead Award: Brigitte Jordan

• Margaret Mead Award: Nancy Scheper-Hughes

• Margaret Mead Award: Sue E. Erstoff

• Margaret Mead Award: Susan C.M. Scrimshaw

• Margaret Mead Award: Jill Korbin

• Margaret Mead Award: Mark Nichter