National Anthropological Archives

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• Learn more about Africa, American history, American Indians, anthropology, Asia, culture, Europe, global education, museum learning, natural history, North America, Oceania, South America, and world history.

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“The National Anthropological Archives collects and preserves historical and contemporary anthropological materials that document the world’s cultures and the history of the discipline. Its collections represent the four fields of anthropology - ethnology, linguistics, archaeology, and physical anthropology - and include manuscripts, fieldnotes, correspondence, photographs, maps, sound recordings, film and video created by Smithsonian anthropologists and other preeminent scholars.”

“All told, the archives’ holdings include nearly 635,000 ethnological and archaeological photographs (including some of the earliest images of indigenous people worldwide); 20,000 works of native art (mainly North American, Asian, and Oceanic); 11,400 sound recordings; and more than 8 million feet of original film and video materials. The Smithsonian’s broad collection policy and support of anthropological research for over 150 years have made the NAA and HSFA unparalleled resources for scholars interested in the cultures of North America, Latin America, Oceania, Africa, Asia and Europe.”

Today, the NAA continues to acquire cultural materials that enhance our understanding of the world’s peoples and draw attention to the changing historical relationship between recorded observation, ethnography, and other forms of anthropological analysis.

Online Exhibits Include:

• Camping With the Sioux: Fieldwork Diary of Alice Cunningham Fletcher
• Henry Wood Elliot: An American Artist in Alaska
• Selections from the Field Journal of William Duncan Strong: Honduras, 1933
• Canela Body Adornment: Photographs from the William H. Crocker Collection
• Kiowa Drawings
• Tichkematse
• A Cheyenne at the Smithsonian