Indigenous Anthropology and Linguistics in Smithsonian Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletins, 1939 and 1956

Indigenous Ethnographic Studies

Archive

Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology bulletins, 1939 and 1956, document the federal research system through which Indigenous archaeology, language, physical anthropology, and ethnology were collected, classified, and circulated by the Smithsonian in the twentieth century. The Bureau of American Ethnology’s Bulletin series was a government-published scholarly vehicle for documentation of Native American history, culture, and linguistics, and Smithsonian Libraries describes the series as containing unusually detailed documentation through text and illustrations. These two volumes show that system operating across Central America, the Caribbean coast of Panama, the southeastern United States, lowland South America, and northern North America, providing primary-source evidence for the study of Maya archaeology in British Honduras/Belize, Indigenous language classification, missionary linguistics, and the institutional history of U.S. anthropology.

Two 8vo volumes in original green printed wrappers, published in Washington, D.C. by the United States Government Printing Office. The grouping includes one collected Bureau of American Ethnology anthropological volume and one single-author grammar and dictionary. Together they contain archaeological plans, plates, descriptive site accounts, linguistic classification, historical translations, physical-anthropological reporting, ethnological notes, grammar, verbal paradigms, and bilingual lexical material. The first volume includes Thomas and Mary Gann’s “Archeological Investigations in the Corozal District of British Honduras,” cataloged by Smithsonian Research Online as Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 123, Anthropological Paper No. 7, pages 1–66, published in 1939. The second volume, Ephraim S. Alphonse’s Guaymí Grammar and Dictionary, With Some Ethnological Notes, is cataloged as Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 162, published in 1956, 128 pages.

[1] Gann, Thomas and Mary Gann, et al. Anthropological Papers. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1939. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 123. 299 pages, 8vo, original green printed wrappers. Collected volume including “Archeological Investigations in the Corozal District of British Honduras,” documenting Maya mounds, monumental architecture, ceramics, plans, and plates from Nohmul and neighboring sites in what is now Belize; additional papers address Cree and Montagnais-Naskapi dialect classification, two skulls from British Honduras, Sedelmayr’s 1746 account of the Yaruros of the Capanaparo River in Venezuela, Creek Indian notes, the Yaruros, and the archaeology of Arauquin. [2] Alphonse, Ephraim S. Guaymí Grammar and Dictionary, With Some Ethnological Notes. Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1956. Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin 162. ix, 128 pages, 8vo, original green printed wrappers. Alphonse, a Wesleyan Methodist missionary and Panamanian citizen, presents a grammar and lexicon of the Guaymí language based on long residence among Valiente communities of Bocas del Toro, with sections on sounds, parts of speech, verbal forms, Guaymí-English/Spanish vocabulary, and ethnological notes on territory, social organization, and lifeways; Glottolog separately identifies the work as a 1956 Bureau of American Ethnology Bulletin published by the Government Printing Office. Bulletin 123 with fading to spine and cover edges, mild fore-edge toning, minor cover rippling, clean pages, and tight binding; Bulletin 162 with mild toning to cover edges and lightly bent upper right corners, otherwise clean and sound; very good overall. Focused Bureau of American Ethnology pairing preserving U.S. state-sponsored documentation of Indigenous archaeology and language, especially northern Belize Maya material culture and one of the early book-length published grammars and dictionaries of Guaymí.

Item #22878

Price: $450.00