Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland

This is the complete digitized archive of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Founded in 1871, the Institute is the world’s oldest scholarly association dedicated to study of humankind. The archive provides primary sources in anthropology and related fields, such as ethnic and area studies, archaeology, and colonial history. It also includes material relating to the development of these disciplines over nearly 150 years.

Historical materials in the collection may reflect a British colonial view of foreign cultures, and some materials may now be known to be inaccurate. The purpose of the collection is to provide a history of the Institute and the development of anthropology as a field.

Content types are manuscripts, maps, and photographs. Subtypes include administrative records, correspondence, personal papers, reports and conference papers, pamphlets, field notes, and bibliographies. The database allows basic and advanced full text searching through the entire archive of the Institute. The Collections option displays a traditional finding aid, outlining the archive’s constituent collections and allowing one to browse at the collection, box, and folder level.