For each survey year we used a standard set of categories to summarize the major topics of each paper in each of the four mainstream journals. Below we have the top two topics for each year. This is a great way to track the evolving interests of anthropologists, mediated of course by the interests of the editors of the journals. There was a good deal of variability in the way articles were coded, however.

(How to read the information)
Year
TOPIC # 1
TOPIC # 2

1970
Kinship and Social Organization
Religion & Ritual

1973
Kinship and Social Organization
Conflict

1976
Kinship and Social Organization
Language and Culture

1979
Religion & Ritual
Marxism

1982
Symbolism & Cosmology
Kinship and Social Organization

1985
Symbolism & Representation
Ecology & Land Use

1988
Kinship & Social Organization
Symbolism & Representation

1991
Cognition
Gender

1994
Religion & Ritual
Gender

1997
Symbolism/Representation
Gender / Identity