menstruation and the power of Yurok women: methods in cultural reconstruction

Consideration of Yurok Indian women's attitudes towards menstruation and of the ritual observances surrounding it enhance our understanding of the position of women in Yurok society and of the aboriginal role of menstruation in the temporal structuring of village life. This paper exemplifies a methodology for investigating this and other topics incompletely reported in received ethnographies of now much‐changed cultures. The specific ethnographic case to which this methodology is applied, viewed in light of current biological research, generates general hypotheses for testing in viable hunter‐gatherer societies , [gender, menstruation, methodology, time, Yurok Indians]