An American Anthropologist in Melanesia: A B Lewis and the Joseph N Field South Pacific Expedition, 1909-1913 (review)

Abstract

In the early twentieth century, American anthropologist A B Lewis undertook a remarkable ethnological expedition to collect objects, mainly from New Guinea, for Chicago's burgeoning Field Museum. And collect he did! Lewis returned with an astounding 14,000 items and 2,000 photographs. Pioneering though he was, Lewis's contributions to Pacific Island studies have been difficult to appreciate. But no longer. In an encyclopedic effort, Robert Welsch has masterfully compiled Lewis's field diaries and annotated them with a wealth of contextual information culled from Lewis's photos and writings, museum storerooms and archives, maps and gazettes, and his own fieldwork along the north coast of Papua NewGuinea. This innovative two-volume work is important for anthropology, history, museology, and material culture studies. It offers a comprehensive, textual and pictographic view of a pivotal era in Pacific studies, showing how early twentieth-century science quite literally "saw" Pacific Islanders and their things.