Reconstructing the Spencer and Gillen Collection: Museums, Indigenous Perspectives and the Production of Cultural Knowledge

Spencer and Gillen are foundational figures in the history of anthropology and the development of the fieldwork method. They created a remarkable material record of the societies of central Australia at the turn of the twentieth century in photography, film, sound, fieldnotes and artefacts. The material record has been dispersed among many different institutions around the world. Our aim is to bring the collections back together in a digital archive that will enable the process of their research to be reconstructed. This body of data will then be analysed to understand the relationship between method and theory at a crucial period in the development of anthropology. This then opens up new possibilities for evaluating change over time.