The original field anthropologist: Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay in Oceania, 1871-1883

This archival and field research project addresses the textual and visual material from the thirteen-year odyssey through Oceania by the late-nineteenth century Russian anthropologist, Nikolai Miklouho-Maclay. Widely regarded as the first European to engage in long-term anthropological field research, living amongst Oceanic communities, his influence on the discipline was limited by an early death. The exceptional detail and intimacy of his field sketches and journals will inspire exchanges and conversations with descendants ofthe source communities, enable a profound analysis of the layered significance of the original encounters, and inform a pioneering history of Russian understandings of Oceanic anthropology.