Living Cultures
In museums anthropology is essentially the study of the material culture, that is the objects made and used, of peoples whose technology is not that of mass production industrial societies like those of Western Europe and North America. In the Manchester Museum the anthropology collections are mainly from areas outside Europe, namely Asia, Africa, the Americas and Oceania. Although anthropology really only embraces cultures of the recent past as well as the present, the collections here do include some archaeological material, particularly from the Americas.
The Collection
The anthropology collections number about sixteen thousand artefacts ranging from American Indian stone tools to Japanese ivory carvings. Owing to the limited display space only a relatively small proportion of this material can be exhibited at any one time in permanent and temporary exhibitions.
Nearly half of the collections are from Africa and made between about 1850 and the present day. The next largest is the Oceanic collection which comprises about a quarter of the total holdings. Most of this dates to the 19th and 20thC and includes large numbers of weapons. Next is the Asian collection in which Japan, China and the Indian subcontinent are strongly represented. Finally there is a significant American Indian and Arctic (Eskimo and Inuit) collection which includes nineteenth century Plains Indian clothing and Peruvian pottery of the first century AD.
Darbishire Collection
The core of the anthropology collection became established during the first thirty years of the twentieth century. The first significant donor was R. D. Darbishire, a Manchester solicitor, who was born in 1826 and died in 1908. He probably acquired his ethnological material by purchase in the United Kingdom rather than collection in the field. His first major donation was in 1904/5 when he gave 92 pieces of ancient Peruvian pottery from Piura, Cuzco and other localities. The pots very likely came from tombs. In all, Darbishire donated over 700 artefacts, including some fine Eskimo ivory carvings, before his death.
Charles Heape Collection
In 1922, the University received a letter from Charles Heape, a landowner and businessman from Rochdale, offering the Museum his collection of artefacts from Oceania, North America and other areas; some fifteen hundred items. Many were weapons from islands in the South Pacific and reflected his aim to make a comprehensive collection of weapons and paddles from the South Pacific islanders. Heape, born in 1848, spent some of his early years in Australia. Some of the Aboriginal clubs, shields and boomerangs he collected are of a type found in Victoria and may have been acquired while he was in Australia. Most of his Pacific Island material was procured from missionaries and others who had been in that area in the 19thC, but we do not have any records of his collecting in the field.
Lloyd Bequest of Japanese Art
The most significant private collection given to the Museum after 1945 was R. W. Lloyd's bequest of Japanese sword furniture, swords, ivories, lacquer, wood carvings, metalwork and pottery. Lloyd, a director of Christie's auction house in London, was also a keen entomologist and this interest brought him into contact with the then Keeper of Entomology, Dr. Hincks, who introduced him to Professor Cannon, the Chairman of the Museum Committee. Cannon had a strong interest in Japanese art and this may have been one reason why Lloyd left so much of his Japanese collection to Manchester.
Field Collecting
Some of the anthropology collections were obtained in the field by professional anthropologists. Frank Willett, Keeper of Ethnology and General Archaeology from 1950 - 1958, collected pottery, masks and ritual regalia in Nigeria in 1956 for the Museum. Some of these pottery types are no longer being made. Another field collection is Peter Worsley's bark paintings, baskets, bone boxes and other items from the Wanindiljaugwa, an Aboriginal tribe from Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria, North Australia. Although obtained in 1952 this latter collection shows the influence of Western technology since the black pigment used by the Aborigines to make paint is derived from old torch batteries. Worsley was Professor of Sociology at Manchester until 1983.
