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Division of Anthropology Archives houses approximately 670 linear feet of archival material, dating from the 1890's to the present. The collection includes accession documentation, original catalogs, field notes, photographs, artwork pertaining to AMNH publications in anthropology, and Divisional correspondence from 1894 to the present. The Division of Anthropology is in the process of marking up our finding aids in XML using the standard EAD (Encoded Archival Description). Finding aids are now searchable by name, cultural group, subject, geographic location, genre/form, and associated object collections. Please note that this is a work in progress and that the finding aids currently listed represent only a fraction of the collections housed in the Division.
Starr Congo Expedition Field Notes (1905-1906).
American Anthropologist Frederick Starr joined the missionary/explorer Samuel Verner on a collecting expedition to the Congo from 1905-1906. He collected nearly 5,000 artifacts including musical instruments, shields, baskets, masks, stools and games that have become part of the Museum's collection from the Congo region. During his year in Africa, Starr kept a field diary, housed at the University of Chicago Library, where he recorded his daily observations, lists of people he encountered, descriptions of the artifacts he collected.
Additional Resources: Objects from Starr Expedition
Laufer's Guide to the Southwest Gallery (Chinese Hall). In 1904, objects collected by Berthold Laufer during an expedition to China (1901-1904) were installed in the Southwest Gallery (Chinese Hall) on the third floor of the museum. The exhibition illustrated the industrial and domestic life of the Chinese, their amusements, their religion, and their arts. Laufer's guide was never published. The guide is heavily edited by Laufer and still in galley form.
Additional Resources: Objects from China Expedition
Photographs from Lang-Chapin Congo Expedition (1909-1915). Mammalogist Herbert Lang and his assistant James P. Chapin collected and documented zoological, botanical, and anthropological collections and produced painted and photographic images of the natural and human environment. The material culture collected by Lang and Chapin, their comprehensive field notes and photographs combine to give a remarkably extensive picture of life in northeastern Democratic Republic of the Congo in the early twentieth century.
Additional Resources: Objects from Lang-Chapin Expedition | Library's Lang-Chapin Expedition Website
Photographs from Jesup North Pacific Expedition (1897-1902). The Jesup North Pacific Expedition led by the anthropologist Franz Boas, the first landmark research project of the Division of Anthropology, turned out to be one of the most scientifically important anthropological investigations ever mounted. Conceived and directed by Franz Boas, the expedition was financed by Museum president Morris K. Jesup. The anthropologists Berthold Laufer, Waldemar Jochelson, Waldemar Bogoras conducted ethnographic research and made collections in Siberia, Manchuria, and on Sakhalin Island. The collections, written field notes, wax disk recordings, and photographs were intended to constitute a comprehensive record of the peoples they studied.
Additional Resources: Objects from Jesup Expedition
Anthopological Publications. The Division of Anthropology has been publishing anthropological studies since 1896 when the first such publication appeared in the AMNH Bulletin. The large special reports were published in the Memoirs series. The Anthropological Papers, published since 1907, include some of the great ethnographies of the 20th century, particularly on North American Indians. The Museum has also published, since 1955, the James Arthur Lectures on the Evolution of Human Brain which regularly contain material of anthropological interest. The most important of those were the classic ethnographies of the tribes of the Northwest Coast and Siberia based on the groundbreaking investigations of the Jesup North Pacific Expedition of 1897-1902. These irreplaceable monographs were written by the American, Russian and German ethnographers who spent years in the field under most difficult conditions studying several tribes of the Northwest Coast and Siberia. This work cannot be duplicated and the resulting monographs will never lose their value to anthropology.
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