Jocelyne Dudding, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge and Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie  in the foyer of the British Museum in London. 

It’s a big claim, but papers presented by Jocelyne Dudding and Ciarán Walsh at the Anthropology and Photography conference in the British Museum (May 2014)  have challenged the chronology  of the early development of British anthropology and Haddon’s role in it.

Dudding and Walsh have been working on the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project for the past 6 months, focussing on  photographic and manuscript collections that are held in Cambridge  – in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), the Haddon Library and the University Library. 

They presented preliminary finding of their research at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum. The research, part funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland, is part of a project that is attempting to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey of 1891-1903.

The photographic record of the  the Survey, the photograph albums of Charles R. Browne, were published by  www.curator.ie in 2012 as part of the  the ‘Irish Headhunter’ project. The albums are held in TCD but there was no trace of any paperwork that could place them in context. The search moved to Cambridge and significant work has been done in the photographic collections of the MAA  and the Haddon Papers in the Haddon and University Libraries there.

Preliminary findings suggest that the Survey, established by Haddon and Cunningham in TCD in 1891,  played a much greater role in Haddon’s transition from Zoology to Anthropology than had previously been thought. The photographic record, correspondence and journal entries reveal a lot about Haddon’s role in the survey with significant implications for the history of the early development of anthropology.

These are being teased as the ‘Haddon in Ireland’ project continues with the re-construction of the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey.