The Board for Anthropological Research sponsored over forty anthropological expeditions to study

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Aboriginal people Indigenous peoples are culturally distinct ethnic groups whose members are directly descended from the earliest known inhabitants of a particular geographic region and, to some extent, maintain the language and culture of those original people ...

in the five decades following its establishment in 1926. Although the work of the Board was focussed on physical anthropology, the expeditions also resulted in research across a range of fields, such as linguistics and botany, and also broader aspects of anthropology, including the documentation of social organisation, tribal/language boundaries and songs and ceremony. The records of the Board for Anthropological Research, (and related collections held in the

South Australian Museum The South Australian Museum is a natural history museum and research institution in Adelaide, South Australia, founded in 1856 and owned by the Government of South Australia. It occupies a complex of buildings on North Terrace in the cultu ...

Archives), contain detailed information in a range of formats about many Australian Aboriginal groups and individuals. The collection comprises: minutes; drafts and proofs of publications; papers related to expeditions; data cards; genealogies; photographic prints and negatives; crayon drawings; and film. The Board was formed by Draper Campbell,Draper Campbell
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John Cleland John Cleland (c. 1709, baptised – 23 January 1789) was an English novelist best known for his fictional '' Fanny Hill: or, the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure'', whose eroticism led to his arrest. James Boswell called him "a sly, old malcont ...

, Henry FryHenry Fry
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Frederic Wood Jones Frederic Wood Jones FRS (23 January 1879 – 29 September 1954), usually referred to as Wood Jones, was a British observational naturalist, embryologist, anatomist and anthropologist, who spent considerable time in Australia. Biography Jone ...

,Frederic Wood Jones
/ref> Robert Pulleine,
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Archibald Watson Archibald Watson FRCS (27 July 1849 – 30 July 1940) was an Australian surgeon and professor of anatomy at the University of Adelaide. Early life Watson was born at Tarcutta, New South Wales, the son of Sydney Grandison Watson, a retired ...

.Archibald Watson
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employees and presidents of the

Royal Society of South Australia The Royal Society of South Australia (RSSA) is a learned society whose interest is in science, particularly, but not only, of South Australia. The major aim of the society is the promotion and diffusion of scientific knowledge, particularly in rel ...

have been members of the Board, including: * A.A. Abbie * T.D. Campbell * J.B. Cleland * F.J. Fenner * H.K. Fry * C.J. Hackett * H.M. Hale *

Thomas Harvey Johnston Thomas Harvey Johnston (9 December 1881 – 30 August 1951) was an Australian biologist and parasitologist. He championed the efforts to eradicate the invasive prickly pear. Life and times Johnston was born in 1881 at Balmain, Sydney, Austral ...

* F. Wood Jones * R.H. Pulleine * T.G. Strehlow * N.B. Tindale * A. Watson

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Board For Anthropological Research 1926 establishments in Australia Scientific organizations established in 1926 Anthropology organizations Australian Aboriginal culture