Notes and Queries on Anthropology: Descriptive Characters

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the discipline of physical anthropology focused on recording anatomical and physiological dimensions to identify what were perceived as distinct racial and tribal types. As detailed in Physical type photographs, population groups were categorized using taxonomic conventions similar to those used for plant and animal species. These quasi-scientific practices often placed groups into evolutionary schemata ranging from primitive to civilized, which served to legitimize ideologies of white supremacy and European colonial expansion.

The systematic recording of traits described in Notes and Queries on Anthropology was often supplemented by photography. In 1896, Maurice Vidal Portman argued that large photographs of the face, both in full face and profile, could provide satisfactory answers to the manual's descriptive questions. Additionally, A. C. Haddon contributed guidelines to the manual specifying that nude figures should be photographed from front, side, and back views with heels together and arms at the sides, ideally including a metric scale in the same plane as the subject, as noted in Physical type photographs.

The framework provided by this manual informed the fieldwork of colonial anthropologists such as Northcote Whitridge Thomas (1868 to 1936). Between 1909 and 1915, Thomas applied these anthropometric and physical type recording practices during his tours as Government Anthropologist in Southern Nigeria and Sierra Leone. This specific archival material is now part of the [Re:]Entanglements project, which researches and rearticulates the collections assembled by Thomas to re-engage with the ethnographic archive.