Harold Colyer Conklin (April 27, 1926 – February 18, 2016) was an American anthropologist who conducted extensive ethnoecological and

linguistic Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure. Linguis ...

field research in

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia, also spelled South East Asia and South-East Asia, and also known as Southeastern Asia, South-eastern Asia or SEA, is the geographical south-eastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of mainlan ...

(particularly the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

) and was a pioneer of

ethnoscience Ethnoscience has been defined as an attempt "to reconstitute what serves as science for others, their practices of looking after themselves and their bodies, their botanical knowledge, but also their forms of classification, of making connections, e ...

, documenting indigenous ways of understanding and knowing the world.

Early life and education

Conklin was born in

Easton, Pennsylvania Easton is a city in, and the county seat of, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, United States. The city's population was 28,127 as of the 2020 census. Easton is located at the confluence of the Lehigh River, a river that joins the Delaware R ...

in 1926 but moved before the age of one to his father's hometown of Patchogue, New York. Interested in Native American culture from an early age, he was adopted by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe of the

Akwesasne The Mohawk Nation at Akwesasne ( ; french: Nation Mohawk à Akwesasne; moh, Ahkwesáhsne) is a Mohawk Nation (''Kanienʼkehá:ka'') territory that straddles the intersection of international (United States and Canada) borders and provincial (Ont ...

(Mohawk) Nation in 1939, when he was in eighth grade. While in high school, he pursued his interest in anthropology by serving as a volunteer at the American Museum of Natural History under anthropology curator

Clark Wissler Clark David Wissler (September 18, 1870 – August 25, 1947) was an American anthropologist, ethnologist, and archaeologist. Early life Clark David Wissler was born in Cambridge City, Indiana on September 18, 1870 to Sylvania (née Needler) an ...

. Conklin entered the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

as an undergraduate in 1943, studying with anthropologists

Robert Lowie Robert Harry Lowie (born '; June 12, 1883 – September 21, 1957) was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as ...

Alfred L. Kroeber Alfred Louis Kroeber (June 11, 1876 – October 5, 1960) was an American cultural anthropologist. He received his PhD under Franz Boas at Columbia University in 1901, the first doctorate in anthropology awarded by Columbia. He was also the first ...

, and Edward W. Gifford, as well as geographer

Carl O. Sauer Carl Ortwin Sauer (December 24, 1889 – July 18, 1975) was an American geographer. Sauer was a professor of geography at the University of California at Berkeley from 1923 until becoming professor emeritus in 1957. He has been called "the d ...

. He attended Berkeley for one year before being inducted into the

United States Army The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...

in July 1944. After serving briefly in

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...

and

Leyte Leyte ( ) is an island in the Visayas group of islands in the Philippines. It is eighth-largest and sixth-most populous island in the Philippines, with a total population of 2,626,970 as of 2020 census. Since the accessibility of land has be ...

, he served with the 158th Infantry Regiment on the island of

Luzon Luzon (; ) is the largest and most populous island in the Philippines. Located in the northern portion of the Philippines archipelago, it is the economic and political center of the nation, being home to the country's capital city, Manila, as ...

in the

. When

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

came to an end, Conklin continued serving with the Army in the Philippines until his discharge in August 1946. With the support of the Berkeley anthropology department he remained in the Philippines to conduct fieldwork for a year and a half. In 1947, he traveled to

Mindoro Mindoro is the seventh largest and eighth-most populous island in the Philippines. With a total land area of 10,571 km2 ( 4,082 sq.mi ) and has a population of 1,408,454 as of 2020 census. It is located off the southwestern coast of Luz ...

and

Palawan Palawan (), officially the Province of Palawan ( cyo, Probinsya i'ang Palawan; tl, Lalawigan ng Palawan), is an archipelagic province of the Philippines that is located in the region of Mimaropa. It is the largest province in the country in t ...

for a linguistic and cultural survey, spending time with the Hanunóo, an upland tribe in Mindoro. In

Manila Manila ( , ; fil, Maynila, ), officially the City of Manila ( fil, Lungsod ng Maynila, ), is the capital of the Philippines, and its second-most populous city. It is highly urbanized and, as of 2019, was the world's most densely populate ...

, he met with the tropical botanist

Harley Harris Bartlett Harley Harris Bartlett (March 9, 1886 – February 21, 1960) was an American botanist, biochemist, and anthropologist. He was an expert in tropical botany and an authority on Batak language and culture. Early life Bartlett was born in Anacond ...

, who instructed him in botanical research and provided him with funds to create an ethnobotanical collection from Palawan. Conklin returned to Berkeley in 1948 and finished his undergraduate work in 1950. He then started graduate school in anthropology at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...

. At Yale he studied with

Floyd Lounsbury Floyd Glenn Lounsbury (April 25, 1914 – May 14, 1998) was an American linguist, anthropologist and Mayanist scholar and epigrapher, best known for his work on linguistic and cultural systems of a variety of North and South American languages. ...

(who became his dissertation advisor), Bernard Bloch, and

Isidore Dyen Isidore Dyen (16 August 1913 in Philadelphia – 14 December 2008 in Newton, Massachusetts) was an American linguist, Professor Emeritus of Malayo-Polynesian and Comparative Linguistics at Yale University. He was one of the foremost scholars i ...

, among others. His fellow graduate students included William C. Sturtevant and Charles Frake, who shared his interest in language, culture, and cognition. He conducted fieldwork among the Hanunóo in Mindoro from 1952 to 1954, completing his dissertation in 1955.

Career

In 1955, Conklin accepted a teaching position in anthropology at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

. There he pursued his research interests in language, culture, cognition, kinship, and folk classification. He continued publishing his analysis of the Hanunóo until 1961, when he moved his research to

Ifugao Ifugao, officially the Province of Ifugao ( ilo, Probinsia ti Ifugao; tl, Lalawigan ng Ifugao), is a landlocked province of the Philippines in the Cordillera Administrative Region in Luzon. Its capital is Lagawe and it borders Benguet to the ...

in northern Luzon, where he would make a series of fieldwork trips for the next two decades. Conklin joined the faculty of the Department of Anthropology at

in 1962. At Yale his research areas included the ethnology and ecology of tropical forested areas of the Pacific Basin. Based on his extensive research, Conklin built one of the largest ethnographic collections from the Philippines at Yale's

Peabody Museum of Natural History The Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale University is among the oldest, largest, and most prolific university natural history museums in the world. It was founded by the philanthropist George Peabody in 1866 at the behest of his nephew Oth ...

, where he was Curator of Anthropology from 1974 until his retirement in 1996. Nearly 1,500 objects that he collected in the Philippines have been acquired by the American Museum of Natural History. Conklin died on February 18, 2016, at the age of 89.

Publications

Some of Harold Conklin's publications include: * (1955a) "Hanunóo Color Categories" ''Southwestern Journal of Anthropology'', Vol. 11, No. 4. pg. 339-344 * (1955b)'' The Relation of Hanunoo Culture to the Plant World'' * (1956) "Tagalog Speech Disguise" ''Language'', Vol. 32, No. 1. pg. 136-139. * (1957) ''Hanunoo Agriculture'' * (1959a) "Facts and Comments. Ecological Interpretations and Plant Domestication" ''American Antiquity'', Vol. 25, No. 2. pg. 260-262 * (1959b) "Linguistic Play in Its Cultural Context" Language, Vol. 35, No. 4. pg. 631-636. * (1963) ''The Study of Shifting Cultivation''. Washington: Technical Publications * (1967) ''An Ethnoecological Approach to Shifting Agriculture'' * (1980) ''Ethnographic Atlas of

: A Study of Environment, Culture, and Society in northern

'' * (1986) "Symbolism and Beyond. Hanunóo Color Categories" ''Journal of Anthropological Research'', Vol. 42, No. 3, pg. 441-446.

Online material

Conklin, Harold. C (1949) "Bamboo Literacy on Mindoro" ''Pacific Discovery'' Vol 3. Pg 4-11
Accessed August 12, 2009

Accessed August 12, 2009

References

External links

"Bibliographical Note: Harold Conklin" Cordillera Northern Luzon Archive
small>Accessed August 10, 2009

small>Accessed August 10, 2009

small>Accessed August 10, 2009 * ttp://classes.yale.edu/03-04/anth500b/projects/project_sites/00_Neidel/Biography.htm "Biography" Yale Universitysmall>Accessed August 10, 2009
Review of Conklin, Harold C., (2007) ''Fine Description: Ethnographic and Linguistic Essays''
Accessed August 10, 2009
Harold C. Conklin Papers (MS 1956).
Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
Michael R. Dove and Patrick V. Kirch, "Harold C. Conklin", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (2018)
{{DEFAULTSORT:Conklin, Harold American anthropologists Ethnobiologists 1926 births 2016 deaths People from Easton, Pennsylvania People from Patchogue, New York United States Army personnel of World War II UC Berkeley College of Letters and Science alumni Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni Columbia University faculty Yale University faculty Members of the United States National Academy of Sciences Military personnel from California American expatriates in the Philippines