This book , is intended as a preliminary guide to taboos, examining some aspects of
their meaning, use, and importance in religion, economics, politics and society. It
draws on a wide range of disciplines, including anthropology, folklore, psychology,
art, literature, music and the natural sciences. The time-frame ranges from the
origins of human culture, with evidence of animal remains found in ancient Chinese
tombs, to ancient law codes from India, Iran and the Near East and proscriptions
against pollution in Greece and Rome from the classical era, and extends to 20th-century
society with the application by surrealist artists and film-makers of the controversial
psychological insights into the subject made by Sigmund Freud. Because the aim of the
encyclopedia is to be as diverse as possible, the use of taboos in traditional literature
and folklore, such as the importance of the geis in medieval Irish texts, is also included.

Those topics naturally associated with the concept of taboo such as incest, cannibalism,
food, sex, pollution and death are discussed in detail with theoretical analyses by major
scholars in the field, while there are also separate entries for the foremost writers on
the subject, including Sigmund Freud, Mary Douglas, Edmund Leach, Franz Steiner and
Frederick Barth. This makes the encyclopedia useful for students and those with
a specialist interest while at the same time introducing the general reader to the
background and context of some familiar present-day taboos, such as table manners, dress
and pornography. But not all entries are entirely serious in their aim: there is plenty to
discover within these pages of an imaginative and fanciful nature, customs and prohibitions
that betray a playfulness at work quite at odds with the gravity normally associated with taboo.

Entries are listed in an alphabetical order and are followed by cross-references and
a bibliography.

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