Established | 1965 |
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Location | 4210 Silver Hill Rd Suitland, Maryland |
Type | Archives |
Collections | Ethnographical and archaeological materials |
Collection size | 19,000 cubic feet of records |
Director | Celia Emmelhainz |
Owner | Smithsonian Institution |
Website | www |
Part of a series on the |
Anthropology of art, media, music, dance and film |
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Social and cultural anthropology |
The National Anthropological Archives is the third largest archive in the Smithsonian Institution and a sister archive to the Human Studies Film Archive. The collection documents the history of anthropology and the world's peoples and cultures, and is used in indigenous language revitalization. It is located in the Smithsonian's Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland, and is part of the Department of Anthropology at the National Museum of Natural History.
The National Anthropological Archives (NAA) is the successor to the archives of the Bureau of American Ethnology (BAE), which was founded in 1879 by John Wesley Powell. [1] In 1968, The NAA was formalized, incorporating the collections of the BAE, which focused on American Indians, as well as the papers of Smithsonian anthropology curators and other anthropologists who conduct research around the world. [1] [2] The establishment of the NAA was supported by grants from the Wenner-Gren Foundation to provide a repository for scholars without a home institution (or whose home institution had no archives), in order to promote the preservation of the anthropological record.[ citation needed ] [3]
The NAA is the only archival repository in the United States dedicated to preserving ethnographic, archaeological, and linguistic fieldnotes, physical anthropological data, photographs, sound recordings and other media created by American anthropologists. [4] The collection includes fieldnotes, journals, manuscripts, correspondence, photographs, maps, sound recordings. Spanning over 150 years of American history and world history, materials held in the archives include nearly 1 million photographs, 20,000 works of indigenous art, and 11,400 sound recordings. [5]
In 2010, the NAA received a Save America's Treasures grant to preserve manuscripts relating to 250 endangered languages. from native North America. [6] NAA photographs and manuscripts, including 8,200 pages of Cherokee language materials, have been scanned and are available online for research through SOVA, the Smithsonian's archival catalog. [6] In 2014, the NAA received a grant for preservation and digitization of sound recordings of endangered languages. [7]
Directors of the National Anthropological Archives have included:
Margaret C Blaker (1968-1972) [8]
Herman Viola (1972-1986) [9]
Mary Elizabeth Ruwell (1990-1993) [10]
John P. Homiak (1993-2005)
Robert Leopold (2005-2010) [11]
John P. Homiak (2005-2018)
Celia Emmelhainz (2022- ) [12]
James Mooney was an American ethnographer who lived for several years among the Cherokee. Known as "The Indian Man", he conducted major studies of Southeastern Indians, as well as of tribes on the Great Plains. He did ethnographic studies of the Ghost Dance, a spiritual movement among various Native American culture groups, after Sitting Bull's death in 1890. His works on the Cherokee include The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees (1891), and Myths of the Cherokee (1900). All were published by the US Bureau of American Ethnology, within the Smithsonian Institution.
The Bureau of American Ethnology was established in 1879 by an act of Congress for the purpose of transferring archives, records and materials relating to the Indians of North America from the Interior Department to the Smithsonian Institution. But from the start, the bureau's visionary founding director, John Wesley Powell, promoted a broader mission: "to organize anthropologic research in America." Under Powell, the bureau organized research-intensive multi-year projects; sponsored ethnographic, archaeological and linguistic field research; initiated publications series ; and promoted the fledgling discipline of anthropology. It prepared exhibits for expositions and collected anthropological artifacts for the Smithsonian United States National Museum. In addition, the BAE was the official repository of documents concerning American Indians collected by the various US geological surveys, especially the Geographical and Geological Survey of the Rocky Mountain Region and the Geological Survey of the Territories. It developed a manuscript repository, library and illustrations section that included photographic work and the collection of photographs.
Comecrudan refers to a group of possibly related languages spoken in the southernmost part of Texas and in northern Mexico along the Rio Grande of which Comecrudo is the best known. These were spoken by the Comecrudo people. Very little is known about these languages or the people who spoke them. Knowledge of them primarily consists of word lists collected by European missionaries and explorers. All Comecrudan languages are extinct.
The Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), established as the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies (AIAS) in 1964, is an independent Australian Government statutory authority. It is a collecting, publishing, and research institute and is considered to be Australia's premier resource for information about the cultures and societies of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.
John Peabody Harrington was an American linguist and ethnologist and a specialist in the indigenous peoples of California. Harrington is noted for the massive volume of his documentary output, most of which remains unpublished: the shelf space in the National Anthropological Archives dedicated to his work spans nearly 700 feet.
The Human Studies Film Archives (HSFA) is a sister archive to the National Anthropological Archives within the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. HSFA preserves and provides access to ethnographic films and anthropological moving image materials. It is located at the Smithsonian Museum Support Center in Suitland, Maryland.
Fieldnotes refer to qualitative notes recorded by scientists or researchers in the course of field research, during or after their observation of a specific organism or phenomenon they are studying. The notes are intended to be read as evidence that gives meaning and aids in the understanding of the phenomenon. Fieldnotes allow researchers to access the subject and record what they observe in an unobtrusive manner.
The Hamilton Library at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa is the largest research library in the state of Hawaii. The Library serves as a key resource for the flagship Manoa campus as well as the other University of Hawaiʻi system campuses.
Siuslaw was the language of the Siuslaw people and Lower Umpqua (Kuitsh) people of Oregon. It is also known as Lower Umpqua. The Siuslaw language had two dialects: Siuslaw proper (Šaayušƛa) and Lower Umpqua (Quuiič).
The Volta Laboratory and the Volta Bureau were created in Georgetown, Washington, D.C., by Alexander Graham Bell.
Institute of Sindhology is a resource for knowledge of the Sindh region in present-day Pakistan.
Smithsonian Libraries and Archives is an institutional archives and library system comprising 21 branch libraries serving the various Smithsonian Institution museums and research centers. The Libraries and Archives serve Smithsonian Institution staff as well as the scholarly community and general public with information and reference support. Its collections number nearly 3 million volumes including 50,000 rare books and manuscripts.
The Archives of American Art is the largest collection of primary resources documenting the history of the visual arts in the United States. More than 20 million items of original material are housed in the Archives' research centers in Washington, D.C., and New York City.
Jason Baird Jackson is an American anthropologist who is Professor of Folklore and Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. He is "an advocate of open access issues and works for scholarly communications and scholarly publishing projects." At IUB, he has served as Chair of the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology and as Director of the Folklore Institute. According to the Journal of American Folklore, "Jason Baird Jackson establishes himself as one of the foremost scholars in American Indian studies today."
Museum anthropology is a domain of scholarship and professional practice in the discipline of anthropology.
Mundugumora.k.a.Biwat is a Yuat language of Papua New Guinea. It is spoken in Biwat village of Yuat Rural LLG, East Sepik Province.
The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML) is a nonprofit organization that photographs, catalogs, and provides free access to collections of manuscripts located in libraries around the world.
Sydel Finfer Silverman Wolf was an American anthropologist notable for her work as a researcher, writer, and advocate for the archival preservation of anthropological research. Silverman's early research focused on the study of complex societies and the history of anthropology. This work involved conducting anthropological research in Central Italy, with a focus on traditional agrarian systems, land reform, and festivals in central Italy. She later became active as an administrator, advocating for the study of cultural anthropology and an important force within the community where she organized discussions and symposia around the topic of preserving the anthropological records.
The Archives of the Languages of the World is a collection of sound recordings and documentation held at the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University, Bloomington, focused on documenting endangered languages around the world, particularly from the Americas. The collection is also known as the C.F. and F.M. Voegelin Archives of the Languages of the World.
The Arcadia Fund is a UK charity organization founded by Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin. Established in 2001, the organization provides grants on a worldwide basis focusing on numerous projects outside the UK. The primary focus of the organization is to preserve endangered culture and nature and to provide open access. Its Mission statement outlines the organization's philosophical view to: "serve humanity (and) to preserve cultural heritage and ecosystems". The organization believes that "once memories, knowledge, skills, variety, and intricacy disappear – once the old complexities are lost – they are hard to replicate or replace" and consequently want to, "build a vibrant, resilient, green future".
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