KABERRY, Phyllis Mary, 1910-1977, anthropologist

Scope and Content

Fieldwork notes, correspondence, photographs and papers relating to the Abelam people of Papua New Guinea and the peoples of the Bamenda province of Cameroon; correspondence with other anthropologists; notes on the Abelam language, data on Abelam individuals, drafts for a projected book on the yam cult of Abelam; and language material from the Cameroon.

Administrative / Biographical History

Phyllis Mary Kaberry, 1910-1977, was educated at the University of Sydney. Her first fieldwork was conducted in the early 1930s in North West Australia on the social status of aboriginal women. In 1936 she moved to London to work in the Anthropology Department of the London School of Economics as a research assistant to Audrey Richards. After obtaining her doctorate in 1939 she received a fellowship from the Australian National Research Council to undertake fieldwork among the Abelam tribe in New Guinea. From 1941 to 1943, Kaberry lectured at Yale on Australia and New Guinea and edited Malinowski's unpublished material on culture change. In 1945 she made the first of five field trips to Cameroon, first under the auspices of the International African Institute and later with the support of the Wenner-Gren Foundation. In 1949, she joined the Department of Anthropology at University College London, where she remained a Reader in Social Anthropology for 26 years.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged in 7 sections:
1. New Guinea, Manuscript Fieldnotes, 1939-1940.
2. New Guinea, Papers, 1939-1954.
3. Cameroons, Manuscript Fieldnotes, 1945-1963.
4. Cameroons, Typescript Fieldnotes, notes from Administrative Files and Publications, Correspondence, 1945-1963.
5. Cameroons, Language Material, c1945-1960.
6. Photographs (Closed), nd.
7. Tapes (Closed), nd.

Access Information

Open (with the exception of photographs (sections 6 and 7).

Other Finding Aids

Draft handlist available.

Archivist's Note

Output from CAIRS using template 14 and checked by hand on March 27, 2002

Conditions Governing Use

COPYRIGHT IS HELD BY THE LIBRARY