This book contains 15 essays which provide an overview of the state of the art in the discipline of anthropology, including archaelology, biological anthropology, linguistics, regional studies, and cultural-social anthropology. Most of the authors are professors and researchers from departments of anthropology in colleges and universities. Topics of the essays include archaeological research, materialist approaches in prehistory, estimation of past population trends, endocrine-environment interaction in human variability, models in sociobiology, meaning-text models (a recent trend in Soviet linguistics), American Indian language maintenance, sign language in its social context, Athapaskan Linguisitics, human adaptation to Arctic zones, recent enthnology of the Northwest coast, anthropology of fishing, new directions for anthropology and industry, and ethnographic aspects of the world capitalist system. Each essay begins with a brief section, written in nontechnical language, which informs nonspecialist readers about the topic under review. The book includes subject and author indexes, cumulative indexes of contributing authors and chapter titles for volumes 6-10. (Author/RM)