Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology

Introduction [to the Guide to Ethnological Documents (1-203) of the Department and Museum of Anthropology, University of California Berkeley]

This Guide represents the culmination of some five years' work by the compiler which was initiated in December, 1965. In excess of 50,000 pages of manuscripts and field notes, and thousands of plates and photographs, were sorted, researched, indexed and archived in a decimal system. In 1957-1958, A. L. Kroeber had compiled the first catalog of Museum manuscripts, then numbering but thirty-nine. Beside these relatively few items remained an enormous quantity of collections stored then in the mezzanine of the Anthropology Library of Kroeber Hall. In 1967, Kroeber's list was augmented and edited by the writer, and was then published (Kroeber and Valory 1967) to initiate knowledge of the collection's existence in the academic community at large.

In 1969, a joint committee of Department of Anthropology faculty and Lowie Museum staff met and decided to accept an offer by the University Archives to absorb the collections. By this time, in excess of 150 of the collections had been archived, and their value was becoming known to scholars throughout the United States; numerous scholars came to Berkeley thereafter to examine and utilize the mainly unpublished sources. The lack of adequate facilities to store and use the collections, however, severely hampered this activity, and the Department/Museum "Archives" had merely unofficial status.

The accumulation of these collections began as early as the Department of Anthropology itself (1901), and the Guide, together with the important endnotes, is in itself a meandering history of both the Department and of the course and development of ethnology in California. The collections are significant mainly for their relevance to North American Indian--and California Indian in particular--studies, although there are as well significant Pacific collections. Notable among the archival items are the collections of works by P. E. Goddard, E. W. Gifford, to some extent those of A. L. Kroeber and T. T. Waterman. The private correspondence and scientific papers of A. L. Kroeber and R. H. Lowie are not a part of this collection and are now located in The Bancroft Library. Department and Museum official correspondence to 1958 was also shifted to the University Archives in 1969.

The ethnological documents of the Department and Museum are now available for use to serious scholars, and individuals interested in them should contact the University Archivist, for rules respecting the examination and reproduction of the contents. As a courtesy, permission for citation or publication, in part or in whole, of the collections should be secured, in writing, in advance from the authors where living. In many cases, living authors' addresses can be obtained from either the Lowie Museum files or from the Department of Anthropology in Kroeber Hall; authorization for the use of the collections per se is not necessary on the part of the Museum or Department, however. The University Archivist has sole authority in this matter.

It is hoped that in years to come, the collections now in the University Archives will be utilized to their capacity, as fresh field sources and opportunities for research on traditional cultures of North American Indian societies are swiftly drying up, and the domain of historical Indian civilizations is slipping into the realm of paleoanthropology, and the traditional American Indian is disappearing. As this phenomenon increasingly becomes the general rule, scholars will turn ever increasingly in kind to library and archival sources for new insight and data, and such collections as those in the Archives will gain new and deeper significance.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The writer is grateful to many individuals who responded to queries during the researching of the collections. I would like to especially acknowledge the assistance of the following persons: Mr. Robert Pfeiffer, Anthropology Librarian; Dr. V. K. Golla of George Washington University; Dr. John Rowe, Dr. Robert Heizer, Dr. J. N. Anderson, the late Dr. T. D. McCown, Dr. N. H. H. Graburn, and Dr. Alan Dundes of the University of California, Berkeley; Dr. William Bright and Dr. Harry Hoijer of the University of California, Los Angeles, Dr. Cora Du Bois of Harvard University; Dr. Catherine McClellan of the University of Wisconsin; Dr. T. S. Kauffman of the University of Pittsburg; Dr. Frank J. Essene of the University of Kentucky; Dr. F. S. Hulse of the University of Arizona; Mrs. Delila Gifford; Mrs. Theodora Kroeber-Quinn; Dr. A. B. Elsasser, Mr. Frank Norick, Mr. Gene Prince, and Miss S. R. Gudmundsen of the R. H. Lowie Museum of Anthropology; Dr. W. W. Elmendorf, Dr. J. H. Steward, Dr. Reo Fortune, Dr. C. D. Forde, Dr. Isabel T. Kelly, Dr. Julius Moshinsky, Dr. Shirley Silver, Mr. J. R. K. Kantor of the University Archives; and Dr. Margaret Mead of the American Museum of Natural History.

Berkeley, California October 1971 [Dale Valory Archeological Research Facility Department of Anthropology University of California at Berkeley Berkeley, California]