Notes and Queries on Anthropology

Abstract

THE first edition of this indispensable guide to field anthropology was published in 1874 “to promote accurate anthropological observation on the part of travellers, and to enable those who are not anthropolog sts themselves to supply the information which s wanted for the scientific study of anthropology at home”. This was a counsel of perfection; but there were no schools of anthropology in Britain then, and very few elsewhere, and the risks of mistakes of observation were not fully appreciated, as a glance at the first edition shows. Successive editions, and especially the fourth, in 1912, substituted for many of the original lists of direct questions a short outline of the kind of information already acquired, with hints as to topics most worth elaborating. It was realised that the whole subject of physical anthropology was best left to medically trained observers, and psychology to psychologists; and the general advance in method was held to necessitate careful definition of many of the commoner phrases and terms, especially for those complex social systems which were now attracting the special attention of home-workers, and eliciting some valuable observations in the field.

Notes and Queries on Anthropology.

Fifth edition. Edited for the British Association for the Advancement of Science by a Committee of Section H. Pp. xvi + 404. (London: Royal Anthropological Institute, 1929.) 6s.