README.md
In sboysel/murdock: Murdock (1967) Ethnographic Atlas for African Continent

murdock

G. P. Murdock's (1959) ethnolinguistic map for the African continent packaged for R as a SpatialPolygonsDataFrame object. Fortified with data from Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas (1967) linked to the Human Relations Area Files. This is simply a repackaging of the orignial dataset that can be attributed to George Murdock, Suzanne Blier, and Nathan Nunn. Preview the source spatial data.

Install from GitHub and load package with library. You will then be able to access the object murdock. The requirement sp is loaded automatically.

# devtools::install_github("sboysel/murdock")
library(murdock)
#> Loading murdock
#> Loading required package: sp

From Harvard WorldMap

This dataset represents the George Murdock map of ethnographic regions for Africa linked to the Human Relations Area Files database housed at Yale University. With thanks to HRAF President, Carol R. Ember, Ph.D. These data were published in the Ethnographic Atlas by George Murdoch which is now available in the Digital Editions collection of the University of Pittsburg Press. With thanks to David Bauman of the University of Pittsburg Press. Polygons for this map were digitized by Harvard Professor Nathan Nunn, from "Tribal Map of Africa" a fold out map from the book "Africa: Its peoples and Their Culture History" by George Murdock, 1959. Coastlines from the Digital Chart of the World were used to replace the coastlines in the Murdock map. Harvard professor Suzanne Blier, with the assistance of graduate student Julia Finkelstien added attribute data from Human Area Relations Files (HRAF). CGA GIS scientist, Anna Arzrumtsyan and Clark University M.A. Candidate in GIS, Jerome Chia-Rung Yang carried out the symbolization working with Suzanne Blier and GIS scientist, Ben Lewis of the Harvard Center for Geographic Analysis.