- Demonstrates the importance of cognitive anthropology as an early constituent of the cognitive sciences
- Examines how culturally shared and complex cognitive systems work, how they are structured, how they differ from one culture to another, how they are learned and passed on
- Explains how cultural (or collective) vs. individual knowledge distinguishes cognitive anthropology from cognitive psychology
- Examines recent theories and methods for studying cognition in real-world scenarios
- Contains twenty-nine key essays by leading names in the field