Davenport, William H., 1922-2004

William Hunt Davenport (1922-2004) was a lifelong seaman. Born on May 26, 1922 in Upland, California, USA, and raised in Cucamonga, Calif., Davenport stowed away on a boat bound for Singapore at the age of 14. He reportedly spent time in jail for this stunt, and graduated from Chaffey Union High School (Ontario, Calif.) in 1939. He then studied art and photography at the Art Center School (Los Angeles, Calif.) for one year before joining the military. Davenport served throughout the Pacific during World War II, as a Deck Officer and Master with the U.S. Army Transport Service (1941-46) and as an Ensign, Lt. in the U.S. Naval Reserve (1942-45).

Following his military service, Davenport ran a shipping company, a photography business and advised the Chinese merchant marines. He eventually returned to higher education, graduating with honors in 1952 from the University of Hawaii (Honolulu) with a degree in anthropology. He pursued interdisciplinary graduate studies in anthropology and behavioral sciences at Yale University, where he received his PhD in 1956 under the direction of Sidney Mintz. His dissertation focused on Jamaican fishing communities (1954-55).

Davenport continued to teach at Yale until 1963, when he accepted a dual-position at the University of Pennsylvania’s Anthropology Department and Museum of Anthropology and Archaeology. He would spend nearly his entire career at Penn, with the exception of three years at the University of California Santa Cruz as professor and director of the Center for South Pacific Studies (1969-72), and visiting professorships at Bryn Mawr, University of Hawaii and Wesleyan. As curator of the Oceanian section of the Penn Museum, Davenport helped mount the exhibition “Sculpture and Artifacts from the Eastern Solomon Islands” (Dec. 1967-May 31, 1968), which featured numerous art objects collected by him during his 1964 summer and 1965-66 field trips to Santa Ana and Santa Catalina Islands. Davenport also designed the museum’s permanent Polynesia Hall exhibit in 1983, and mounted seven other major exhibits as curator or co-curator. He served briefly as Associate Director of the Museum, from 1979 to 1980. He retired from Penn in 1992, and was inducted into Penn’s Twenty-Five Year Club in 1996.

During his long career, he was also a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (Palo Alto, Calif.) in 1971-72, a member of the Council of the Smithsonian Institution (Washington, D.C.) from 1976-84, and an associate at the Bishop Museum (Honolulu, Hawaii) from 1953-60 and 1980-2004.

Davenport’s field research took him to the Santa Cruz Islands, Guadalcanal and San Cristobal Islands, and other Solomon Islands; the Moluccas and Sulawesi in Indonesia; and Sarawak in Malaysia; among other locations. He authored four books and more than 60 articles and reviews on subjects including social organization, art, economics, archaeology, religion and ritual, and more. His final book on figure sculpture of the Santa Cruz Islands was published posthumously in 2004.

He died of leukemia on March 12, 2004, at the age of 81.

From the guide to the William H. Davenport papers, Bulk, 1963-1992, 1938-2005, (University of Pennsylvania: Penn Museum Archives)