Learning Center: Expert in Anthropology

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The Value of Using Primary Sources
for the
HISTORICAL ANTHROPOLOGIST

Robert Boyd
Anthropologist

My name is Robert Boyd and I am a cultural anthropologist specializing in the ethnohistory of Pacific Northwest Native Americans. Anthropology, the “science or study of man” is an integrative field which traditionally subsumes four sub-fields or areas of specialization: cultural anthropology (“ethnology”), archaeology, physical anthropology, and linguistics. Cultural anthropology deals with human cultures (culture: an integrated system of learned behavior patterns that are shared by the members of a society), their composition and variations.

Traditionally, cultural anthropologists are expected to spend a large part of their training “in the field,” living with, interviewing, and observing and taking notes on “their people.”  But with the early demise of traditional Native communities in Oregon, the opportunities for “participant observation” (the usual term for this method of study) has always been limited, and fieldwork typically took the form of “salvage anthropology.” The heyday for cultural anthropologists studying Oregon Native Americans was between about 1890 to 1940, when Indian informants who had first-hand knowledge of traditional life-styles and fluent speakers of Northwest native languages were still living, and a large body of myths and ethnographic “texts” was collected. Much of this data was published and—in translation—remains one of the primary sources for information about traditional Native cultures of the Northwest.

 • Elementary School Lesson Plan in Anthropology
 • Middle School Lesson Plan in Anthropology
 • High School Lesson Plan in Anthropology
 • Bibliography in Anthropology

 

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