Expeditionary Anthropology

EXPEDITIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY Methodology and History in Anthropology Series Editors: David Parkin, Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford David Gellner, Fellow of All Souls College, University of Oxford Just as anthropology has had a significant influence on many other disciplines in recent years, so too have its methods been challenged by new intellectual and technical developments. This series is designed to offer a forum for debate on the interrelationship between anthropology and other academic fields but also on the challenge to anthropological methods of new intellectual and technological developments, and the role of anthropological thought in a general history of concepts. For a full volume listing, please see back matter EXPEDITIONARY ANTHROPOLOGY Teamwork, Travel and the ‘Science of Man’ Edited by Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris berghahn N E W Y O R K • O X F O R D www.berghahnbooks.com First published in 2018 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com © 2018 Martin (Edward) Thomas and Amanda Harris All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A C.I.P. cataloging record for this book is available from the Library of Congress British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ORCID: Martin (Edward) Thomas: 0000-0002-2261-5888 Amanda Harris: 0000-0002-9858-2568 978-1-78533-772-7 ISBN hardback 978-1-78533-773-4 ISBN ebook CONTENTS List of Illustrations vii Anthropology and the Expeditionary Imaginary: An Introduction to the Volume 1 Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris Part I. Anthropology and the Field: Intermediaries and Exchange Chapter 1. Assembling the Ethnographic Field: The 1901–02 Expedition of Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen 37 Philip Batty Chapter 2. Receiving Guests: The Cambridge Anthropological Expedition to Torres Straits 1898 64 Jude Philp Chapter 3. Donald Thomson’s Hybrid Expeditions: Anthropology, Biology and Narrative in Northern Australia and England 95 Saskia Beudel Part II. Exploration, Archaeology, Race and Emergent Anthropology Chapter 4. Looking at Culture through an Artist’s Eyes: William Henry Holmes and the Exploration of Native American Archaeology 127 Pamela M. Henson Chapter 5. The Anomalous Blonds of the Maghreb: Carleton Coon Invents the African Nordics 150 Warwick Anderson Chapter 6. Medium, Genre, Indigenous Presence: Spanish Expeditionary Encounters in the Mar del Sur, 1606 175 Bronwen Douglas vi Contents Chapter 7. Ethnographic Inquiry on Phillip Parker King’s Hydrographic Survey 205 Tiffany Shellam Part III. The Question of Gender Chapter 8. Gender and the Expedition: Feminist Anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons and the Politics of Fieldwork in the Americas in the 1920s and 1930s 235 Desley Deacon Chapter 9. What Has Been Forgotten? The Discourses of Margaret Mead and the American Museum of Natural History Sepik Expedition 263 Diane Losche Chapter 10. Gender, Science and Imperial Drive: Margaret McArthur on Two Expeditions in the 1940s 290 Amanda Harris Index 313 Illustrations ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1.1 Senior Arrernte men overseeing the Engwura ceremony, Alice Springs. Photograph by Baldwin Spencer, 1896. 44 Figure 1.2 Members of the 1901–02 expedition, Alice Springs. Unknown photographer, 1901. 47 Figure 1.3 An Atninga (‘revenge’) party of Arrernte men, Alice Springs. Photograph by Baldwin Spencer, 1901. 50 Figure 1.4 Women crawl through the legs of decorated men towards the end of a Warumungu burial ritual, Tennant Creek. Photograph by Baldwin Spencer, 1901. 52 Figure 2.1 William Rivers, Charles Seligman, Sidney Ray, Anthony Wilkin, Alfred Haddon. Mabuyag, 1898. 65 Figure 2.2 Waria, Papi, Noboa, Gizu. Mabuyag Island, 1898. 66 Figure 2.3 Jimmy Rice, Debe Wali, Alfred Haddon, Charlie Ongtong, Anthony Wilkin, William Rivers, Sidney Ray, William McDougall, Charles Myers, Charles Seligman, at Mer, 1898. 71 Figure 2.4 ‘Singing at Las’, Gasu, Enoka, Ulai and Wano. Gadodo standing at centre with John Bruce, William Rivers, Sidney Ray, 1898. 76 Figure 2.5 Mai, worn only by giri-giri le (bird clan men) at the conclusion of the Malu ceremonies. 77 Figure 3.1 Photograph published in Donald F. Thomson, ‘The Story of Arnhem Land’, Walkabout, 1 August 1946. 99 Figure 3.2 Herald and Weekly Times, ‘Prof. [Professor] Donald Thomson’ with family, 1936. 101 Figure 3.3 ‘Portrait of Dr. Donald Thomson’. Unknown photographer, circa 1937. 110 Figure 4.1 Sketch of participants in the Hayden Survey (United States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, 1871–77), 1874. 130 Figure 4.2 ‘Panorama from Point Sublime’, illustration by William H. Holmes, 1882. 131 viii Illustrations Figure 4.3 Topographic sketch of the Mayan city at Copan, Honduras. Drawing by William H. Holmes, 1916. 137 Figure 5.1 Carleton S. Coon with others in Morocco, late 1920s. 154 Figure 5.2 Warrior on horseback. Photograph by Carleton S. Coon, late 1920s. 156 Figure 5.3 Hunting in the Rif. Photograph by Carleton S. Coon, late 1920s. 162 Figure 6.1 Spanish–Chamorro encounter, Guam, Anon., c. 1590. 179 Figure 6.2 La gran baya d. S. Philippe y S. Santiago, Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1606. 182 Figure 6.3 Esta xente es d’esta baia st felipe y st tiago . ., Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1607. 183 Figure 6.4 Puertos i bayas de Tiera de San Buenaventura, Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1606. 184 Figure 6.5 Esta xente es desta baya de san millan . ., Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1607. 185 Figure 6.6 La gran baya d. S. Lorenço y puerto d. Monterei, Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1606. 186 Figure 6.7 Esta xente delas yslas questan alaparte del sur de la Nueva Guinea . ., Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1607. 187 Figure 6.8 Baya de Sanct Pedro de Arlança, Tiera de S. Santiago de los Papuas, Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1606. 188 Figure 6.9 Esta xente es del rremate dela nueva guinea . ., Diego de Prado y Tovar, 1607. 189 Figure 7.1 Sketch of the spear in Phillip Parker King’s Remark Book, April 1818. 207 Figure 7.2 Sketch of the basket with ironhoop handles, by Allan Cunningham. 217 Figure 7.3 Sketch of a spearhead by John Septimus Roe, September 1821. 218 Figure 7.4 ‘Weapons & c., of the Natives of Hanover Bay’. Drawing by Francis Chantrey. 219 Figure 7.5 Title page of Phillip Parker King, Narrative of a Survey of the Intertropical and Western Coasts of Australia, Performed between the Years 1818 and 1822, 1826. 220 Figure 8.1 Elsie Clews Parsons in the Southwest, 1920. 236 Figure 8.2 Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn shares his package of ‘Pirates’ cigarettes with man on camel, Mongolia, 1923. Photograph by Roy Chapman Andrews. 240 Illustrations ix Figure 8.3 Alfred Kidder in his hairy-chinned period in 1912. Photograph by Jesse Nusbaum. 249 Figure 9.1 Conducting Public Flutes, Alitoa Village, Arapesh. Photograph by Reo Fortune, 1932. 269 Figure 9.2 Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead, Reo Fortune, captioned as ‘Group of Anthropologists Who Arrived on Macdhui’. Unknown photographer, July 1933. 275 Figure 10.1 David Cameron, Margaret McArthur and Doreen Langley with an unidentified group in New Guinea. Photograph by James (Jim) Fitzpatrick, 1947. 293 Figure 10.2 The American-Australian Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land at Oenpelli. Photograph by Howell Walker, 1948. 301 Anthropology and the Expeditionary Imaginary: An Introduction to the Volume ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE EXPEDITIONARY IMAGINARY AN INTRODUCTION TO THE VOLUME Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris Anthropologists as Explorers Felix Driver opens Geography Militant (2001), his foundational study of exploration and empire, by quoting Claude Lévi-Strauss on the hubris of explorers. For the doyen of structural anthropology, exploration had by the twentieth century degenerated into ‘a trade’ where the object was not to discover unknown facts but to cover as much distance as possible and assemble ‘lantern-slides or motion pictures, preferably in colour, so as to fill a hall with an audience for several days in succession’.1 Driver observes that for Lévi-Strauss, ‘the calling of the anthropologist was something altogether more noble’ than that of the explorer. The former pursued a course of disciplined observation while the latter disseminated ‘superficial stories’.2 The scientifi- cally trained Lévi-Strauss felt duty-bound to differentiate himself from these commercial travellers. The proposition that anthropology is antithetical to the ethos of adventurism raises questions that are investigated in the pages ahead. Why this insistence upon a dichotomy so flimsy? Why dis- count the call of adventure when it acted as a siren for countless anthropologists? To understand the concerns voiced by Lévi-Strauss, we need to acknowledge that they are more than an assertion of academic superiority. The anxieties from which they stem reveal much about anthropology’s formation as a discipline; they are the residue of a complex and at times quarrelsome nexus between exploration, 2 Martin Thomas and Amanda Harris imperial expansion and the ‘science of man’. Anthropology in its early life was enabled by the systemized observation and reporting that a codified practice of exploration had first projected into putatively uncharted spaces. The expeditions of Cook and other Enlightenment voyagers are paradigmatic in this regard, but they had important pro- genitors (see Douglas, this volume, for a discussion of some Iberian precedents). Anthropology and ethnology, as defined in the guides and rulebooks of the specialist societies created for their promotion in the nineteenth century, absorbed many of the codes and procedures that explorers were expected to follow.3 Anthropology developed in tandem with the blossoming of exploration, which it ultimately out- lived, for exploration came to be thought of as an imperial conceit, while anthropology became institutionally entrenched in universities and museums.

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