Edward Winslow Gifford (1887-1959) devoted his life to studying California Indian ethnography as a professor of anthropology and director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Born in Oakland, he became an assistant curator of ornithology at the California Academy of Sciences after graduating from high school; 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 in 1945. Working in close association with the preeminent leader in California anthropology, Alfred L. Kroeber, Gifford produced more than 100 publications. His numerous contributions to salvage ethnography have left an invaluable record of the state's disappearing native cultures. He developed the University's Museum of Anthropology into a major U.S. institution with its major field research and collections.
References
- Foster, George M. 1960. "Edward Winslow Gifford". American Anthropologist 62:327-329.
- Kroeber, A. L., and E. W. Gifford. Karok Myths. University of California Press, Berkeley.
- Hurtado, Albert L. 1990. "Introduction to the Bison Book Edition". In California Indian Nights, compiled by Edward W. Gifford and Gwendoline Harris Block, pp. 1-7. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln.
External links
- In Memoriam 1961 (Edward Winslow Gifford) (University of California)
- Edward Winslow Gifford. 1917. "Miwok Myths". University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology 12:283-338.]
- Gifford, Edward W., and Robert H. Lowie. 1928. "Notes on the Akwa'ala Indians of Lower California". University of California Publications in American Archeology and Ethnology 23:338-352.
