American Museum of Natural History. Expedition to China (1901-1904)

The American Museum of Natural History's 1901-1904 Expedition to China was one of the first American attempts to study the history and culture of a literate, technologically sophisticated civilization.

Led by Berthold Laufer, the expedition was intended to be a holistic anthropological study, documenting the industrial and social life of the Chinese people. Laufer's work encompassed ethnology, archaeology and physical anthropology; his collections included books, paintings, inscriptions, bas-reliefs, bronzes, pottery, metal mirrors, theater puppets and musical transcriptions.

Berthold Laufer was a philologist, anthropologist, museum curator and sinologist.

Laufer was born in Germany and studied Asian languages at the University of Leipzig. In 1898 and 1899 he led expeditions to Sakhalin and the Amur River region of Siberia during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition directed by Franz Boas, who became Laufer's mentor. From 1901 to 1904, Laufer worked in China, collecting for the American Museum of Natural History. Laufer moved to the Field Museum of Natural History in 1907, becoming curator of anthropology, and leading two more expeditions: to China and Tibet in 1908-1910, and to China in 1923. Laufer published over 200 works on ethnology, language studies, art, archaeology, and the histories of domestic animals and cultivated plants.