Edward W. Gifford

Edward Winslow Gifford (born August 14, 1887 – died May 16, 1959) was an American anthropologist and archeologist, who studied California Indian ethnography, and under whose guidance anthropological collection at the University of California Museum of Anthropology, Berkeley, grew into one of the biggest in the United States

Life

Edward Gifford was born in Oakland, California. He graduated from high school in 1905 and became interested in ornithology. He joined several expeditions, organized by the California Academy of Sciences, among others the expedition to the Galapagos Islands (1905-06), where he observed and described hoe the Pallid Tree Finch. After seeing Gifford’s dedication to work and organizational skills, he got a job as an assistant curator of ornithology at the California Academy of Sciences. He never attended college.

He joined the University of California's Museum of Anthropology in 1912 as an assistant curator, becoming a curator in 1925 and a professor at the University of California, Berkeley in 1945. At Berkeley he served as a faculty member together with Alfred L. Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Ronald Olson, and other famous American anthropologists. In 1947 he succeeded Alfred L. Kroeber as the director of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at University of California.

Gifford became closely associated with the preeminent leader in California anthropology Alfred L. Kroeber, and started to study California Indians. The result of those studies is more than 100 publications on different aspect of California Indian culture. He became particularly fascinated with the salvage ethnography, a branch of ethnography concerned with the practice of salvaging a record of what was left of a culture before it disappeared. He was a dedicated and thorough scientist, and kept record of a tiniest detail of whatever studied. He developed the University's Museum of Anthropology into a major U.S. institution with its major field research and collections.

Gifford conducted numerous field studies and expeditions. In the second half of his career, between 1947 and 1956, as a curator of the Museum of Anthropology, he conducted three pioneering expeditions to the island of Viti Levu, Fiji (1947), New Caledonia (1952), and the island of Yap in Micronesia (1956). There he excavated the remains of pottery and other archeological material, of the cultures that lived on those islands.

He stayed in Berkeley, lecturing and doing research, until his retirement in 1954. He died on May 16, 1959 in Berkeley, California. He was married to Delila Gifford.

Work

Gifford mostly remained famous for his fieldwork among California Indians. By 1900 not more than 30,000 Indians remained in California. Whole tribes were almost wiped out, being assimilated into Euro-American culture of white man. Only handful remained of those who knew their genuine tradition and culture. Gifford was seriously concerned with the pace of destruction of California Indians, and worked to preserve as much data as possible of their culture. He saw “salvage ethnography” as a good method of collecting and preserving data of those endangered cultures.

On of his most popular books was 1930 Californian Indian Nights. It is a collection of folklore stories that are told around campfires. The stories can be typically categorized as creation stories, as they describe the creation of the world, man, sun, fire, etc. Gifford noticed that a myth was missing from those stories, and that is typical for all other Indians in America. It is a myth of migration. California Indians did not have that myth, since they did not migrate, Gifford concluded. The stories in general explained the wisdom behind everyday life of an Indian community.

Gifford’s later career was predominantly influenced by his interest in Pacific cultures. In 1947 he conducted series of excavations on Fiji Island, using stratigraphic excavation methods. He wanted to demonstrate that in Pacific Islands, as in any other part of the world, culture has changed throughout history. On his expedition to New Caledonia in 1952, he excavated the type-site of Lapita at Koné, and numerous other post-Lapita sites.

Beside being a great pioneering fieldworker, Gifford was a also museum scientist. During his directorship in the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology at Berkeley, the anthropological collection grew to one of the greatest collection of this type in the United States. Gifford patiently catalogued each small piece of material excavated, and provided detailed explanation of them. In recent times, with the development of technology and methods of analysis of material artifacts, we are able to gain new insights of material Gifford once collected.

Legacy

After Alfred L. Kroeber, Gifford is probably the second most famous researcher of California ethnography, whose studies of the physical characteristics and kinship terminologies of California Indians contributed to our knowledge of this part of American culture.

Publications

• Gifford, Edward W. 1916. Composition of California Shellmounds. University of California Press

• Gifford, Edward W. 1916. Dichotomous social organization in south central California. University of California Press

• Gifford, Edward W. 1917. Miwok Myths. University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology, 12(8), 283-338.

• Gifford, Edward W. 1917. Tübatulabal and Kawaiisu kinship terms. University of California Press

• Gifford, Edward W. 1926. Clear Lake Pomo Society. University of California Press.

• Gifford, Edward W. 1936. Northeastern and western Yavapai. University of California Press

• Gifford, Edward W. 1937. Culture Element Distributions. University of California Press

• Gifford, Edward W. 1960. Archaeological excavations in Yap. University of California Press.

• Gifford, Edward W. 1965. Californian anthropometry. Kraus Reprint Corp

• Gifford, Edward W. 1965 (original from 1933). The Cocopa. Kraus Reprint Corp

• Gifford, Edward W. 1976. Apache-Pueblo. Kraus Reprint Co.

• Gifford, Edward W. 1980. Tongan Place Names. Periodicals Service Co. ISBN 0527021091

• Gifford, Edward W. & Gwendoline, Harris. 1990. California Indian Nights. University of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803270313

• Gifford, Edward W. & Lowie, Robert. 1928. Notes on the Akwa'ala Indians of Lower California. University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology, 23, 338-352.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Barnard, Alan. 2002. Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. Routledge. ISBN 0415285585

• Campbell, Paul. 2000. Survival Skills of Native California. Gibbs Smith. ISBN 0879059214

• Foster, George M. 1960. Edward Winslow Gifford. American Anthropologist, 62, 327-329.

• Kroeber, A. L. 1980. Karok Myths. University of California Press. ISBN 0520038703

• Summerhayes, Glenn. 2004. Edward W Gifford and Richard Shutler Jr's Archaeological Expedition to New Caledonia in 1952. The Contemporary Pacific. 16(2), 461-463

External links

• Edward W. Gifford – Short biography

• In Memoriam 1961 – In Memoriam on Berkeley website

• Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology – The Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley

• California Indians - The California Indian Alliance website

• Resources on California Indians – San Diego State University website

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