Bound volumes of expedition journals, notes, anthropometric and morphometric data on Australian and foreign collections and blood grouping data.

Archive Collections / Dr Joseph Benjamin Birdsell / Bound volumes of expedition journals, notes, anthropometric and morphometric data on Australian and foreign collections and blood grouping data.

Date Range: 1938 - 1977

Collection: Dr Joseph Benjamin Birdsell

Quantity: 70cm, 6 archive boxes and Albox folders

Arranged: Chronological

Series Identifier: AA689/01

THIS SERIES CONTAINS RESTRICTED MATERIAL
This series can be broken down into two major subseries. The first group, AA 689/1/1 to AA 689/1/2, comprises Birdsell's 'Daily Field' Journals which contains observations and data recorded on the Harvard and Adelaide Universities expedition of 1938-39, and the University of California Los Angeles expedition of 1952-54. There is a complete transcript of AA 689/1/1 in two volumes, AA 689/1/1/1 and AA 689/1/1/2, and a partial transcript of AA 689/1/2 in AA 689/1/2/1.

The second group, AA 689/1/3 to AA 689/1/16, comprises notebooks which contain data relating to both expeditions, notes and references.

Birdsell was not systematic about pagination throughout his journals. Each inventory 'details field' contains specific information about the pagination of that item.

All diary entries, notes, data, illustrations and maps have been hand written or hand drawn by Birdsell.

Aboriginal groups have been cross referenced with the 'Tindale tribe' index which links to the Catalogue in Tindale's 1974 publication Aboriginal tribes of Australia, their terrain, environmental controls, distribution, limits and proper names.

Birdsell was American and used Americanised spelling. In the instance where this occurs within a title, for example 'Australian Geneologies, 1, 1938-39, these have been summarily changed to the Australian-English spelling. Birdsell also used the standard American dating of month/day/year which have been noted according to the Australian standard of day/month/year.

Journals AA 689/1/3 to AA 689/1/16 were previously identified as 'Birdsell Collection Notebooks 1-19'. Each item which was previously identified under this system retains a note identifying the items as such.

Item AA 689/1/17 contains two tools used in the field, a Munsell Soil Chart and a Skin Colour Chart based on Munsell's colour categorisation.

The item previously identified as 'Birdsell Collection Notebook 10' which has the title 'Douglas Oliver's Series of Hybrids from Melanesia', has been transferred into series two AA 689/2/13.