THIS SERIES CONTAINS RESTRICTED MATERIAL
This series can be broken down into eight major sub-series of data cards. The first group, AA 689/9/21, comprises a photocopied report by Walter Edmund Roth (See AA 271), the Northern Protector of Aboriginies (NPA,] containing anthropometric data of individuals from North Queensland, 1898-1900.

The second group, AA 689/9/1, comprises anthropometric data cards copied by Birdsell from the original data recorded by William Lloyd Warner in Arnhem Land, Northern Territory, 1926-1927.

The third group, AA 689/9/2-15, comprises copies of anthropological data cards recorded during the Board for Anthropological Research (BAR; see AA 346) expeditions conducted from 1923-1939.

The fourth group, AA 689/9/16 comprises the original anthropological data cards recorded in the field during the Harvard and Adelaide Universities expedition, 1938-1939. These have been ordered by Birdsell into genetic classes.

The fifth group, AA 689/9/17, comprises anthropological data cards recorded during the University of California Los Angeles and University of Adelaide Expedition, 1952-1954.

The sixth group, AA 689/9/18, comprises copies of anthropological data cards recorded during the BAR expedition to Bentinck, Mornington and Forsyth Islands, Queensland, 1960.

The seventh group, AA 689/9/19, comprises Australian Aboriginal Cranial data cards.

The eight group, AA 689/9/20, comprises non-Australian Cranial data cards.

Birdsell was a physical anthropologist, interested in theories of race. Language and terms referred to in this inventory reflect both scientific nature of the work and the social era in which they were collected, which my be considered inappropriate or offensive.

Australian 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 (see AA 338).

Note that a set of data cards once held in the Birdsell collection have been moved to the CP Mountford (see AA 228) collection. These data cards contain information collected from individuals at Groote Eylandt, Yirrakala and Milingimbi in the Northern Territory during Mountford's expedition in April 1948.