This Series can been broken down into five major sub-series. The first, AA 689/4/1 to AA 689/4/1/4, comprises portrait and profile photographs of individuals who were examined during the Board for Anthropological Research (BAR; see AA 346) expeditions to Koonibba, South Australia 1928; Hermannsburg, Northern Territory, 1929 and McDonald Downs, Northern Territory, 1930. JB Birdsell was not a participant in these expeditions.

The second sub-series, AA 689/4/2/1to AA 689/4/2/2, comprises photographs taken during the Harvard and Adelaide Universities expedition of 1938-39 and the University of California Los Angeles expedition of 1952-54 in which JB Birdsell was a participant.

The third sub-series, AA 689/4/3/1 to AA 689/4/3/2, comprises photos of historical importance collected by JB Birdsell from commercial photographic studios, institutions and other collections.

The fourth sub-series, AA 689/4/4/1 to AA 689/4/4/2, comprises photographs of individual subject photographs of the Vedda people of Sri Lanka, and numerous photographs of foreign ethnology from the Americas, Africa and Asia.

The fifth sub-series, AA 689/4/5/1 to AA 689/4/5/2, consists of morphological photos of Australian Aboriginal crania from the South Australian Museum collection, photographed in 1947.

The JB Birdsell collection of photographs were assigned numbers 1-1600, however this appears to be simply a numerical account and has no functional bearing on the collection. The photographs have been re-ordered into sub-series relating to expeditions and research.