The job could be done without leaving the comforts of his office. You guessed it, not all Cajuns have telephones. He had to go to the field. If you guessed names on mailboxes give yourself a gold star. Anyone who has driven through northern Arizona surely has noticed differences in the square adobe houses of Hopi Indians and the round wooden hogans of the Navajo.
Some phenomena are more complex and difficult to deal with than others.
The degree of simplicity or complexity is, of course, not only relative, but subject to debate. It has both spatial and temporal dimensions. Furthermore, some cultural phenomena on the landscape are more ubiquitous than courthouse squares, and more permanent than houses. Particularly intriguing are cemetaries. Cemetaries can be seen as microcosms of regions.