Donald Thomson, the Man and Scholar

Abstract

[...]because Thomson and Warner had been in Arnhem Land during a period in which Yolngu society and culture remained relatively undisturbed by alien incursion, their work was of the greatest importance in understanding Yolngu history and the situation of Yolngu leaders who subsequently faced the prospect of a huge mining development on their land.1 Warner died on 23 May 1970; the University of Chicago held a memorial service for him, and his wife and daughter scattered his ashes, as he had wished, on Coyote Mountain in Borrego Springs, near San Diego, California.2 Thomson died on 12 May 1970 and on 19 June 1970 his ashes were scattered over Caledon Bay in eastern Arnhem Land. Wonggu was head of the Djapu clan during Thomson's time at Caledon Bay and Thomson had regarded him with admiration and affection.3 In the preface, Warner says his book on the Yolngu, 'is the result of three years (1926-1929) spent in Australia in two field trips to Arnhem Land'.4 Thomson, in the only book dealing with Aboriginal society published during his lifetime, says that the work on which it is based was carried out during expeditions 'in 1935-6-7, under commission by the Commonwealth Government, and in 19412-3, while on war service'.5 Thomson and Warner were close in age - Warner was born in 1898 and Thomson was born in 1901. The reason for the lack of definite evidence of their meeting, I have concluded, lies in the fact that, although they were both Radcliffe-Brown's students at Sydney University, they were there at the same time only for a very short period, if at all. [...]shortly after his study of the Yolngu, Warner returned to the United States and at the same time appears to have shifted his entire research interest to aspects of contemporary United States society and culture. Warner concludes that Yolngu society and culture, including trade and exchange, had changed very little as the result of long contact with the Macassans.15 Thomson, on the other hand, believed that the Macassan voyagers had played a major role in the development of the 'great ceremonial exchange cycle' in the Yolngu area, and argued that:16 Professor Warner has missed entirely the tremendous importance of the impact of this Indonesian culture on the ceremonial life of these people in his review of Malay or Macassar contacts with the people of Arnhem Land...

Donald Thomson, the Man and Scholar, edited by Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson, 269 pp, The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia with support from Museum Victoria, Canberra, 2005, ISBN 0908290217 (pbk).

Donald Thomson died in 1970 during the first year I spent with Yolngu at Yirrkala; Lloyd Warner died the same year. I had only recently arrived in Australia from the United States to begin my PhD research, and did not get the opportunity to meet either of them. They were the two anthropologists I had most wanted to meet because of the long periods of time each had spent with Yolngu people in Arnhem Land (Warner 1927-1929 and Thomson 1935-1943). Their publications were the first major published works concerning the Yolngu: they were ethnographically rich, and I found them riveting. Moreover, because Thomson and Warner had been in Arnhem Land during a period in which Yolngu society and culture remained relatively undisturbed by alien incursion, their work was of the greatest importance in understanding Yolngu history and the situation of Yolngu leaders who subsequently faced the prospect of a huge mining development on their land.1

Warner died on 23 May 1970; the University of Chicago held a memorial service for him, and his wife and daughter scattered his ashes, as he had wished, on Coyote Mountain in Borrego Springs, near San Diego, California.2 Thomson died on 12 May 1970 and on 19 June 1970 his ashes were scattered over Caledon Bay in eastern Arnhem Land. Djiriny and Maw, Yolngu leaders of the Djapu clan and sons of Wonggu, accompanied the ashes on the airforce aeroplane from which the ashes were scattered. Wonggu was head of the Djapu clan during Thomson's time at Caledon Bay and Thomson had regarded him with admiration and affection.3

In the preface, Warner says his book on the Yolngu, 'is the result of three years (1926-1929) spent in Australia in two field trips to Arnhem Land'.4 Thomson, in the only book dealing with Aboriginal society published during his lifetime, says that the work on which it is based was carried out during expeditions 'in 1935-6-7, under commission by the Commonwealth Government, and in 19412-3, while on war service'.5

Thomson and Warner were close in age - Warner was born in 1898 and Thomson was born in 1901. They both studied at Sydney University soon after AR RadcliffeBrown became the first incumbent of the University's recently established Chair of Anthropology.6 I thought surely they must have known each other and engaged in collegial conversation, perhaps even debate, since the proposed field research of each was to be in northern Australia, and that some record of their having met would exist. Although Warner never visited Cape York Peninsula, the possibility of his conducting field research there was briefly considered,7 and Cape York Peninsula was Thomson's first field research destination. I hoped that some record of their exchanges would add a dimension to my understanding of Yolngu history and diminish to some small degree my disappointment at never having met them. Their written work certainly suggested common areas of interest as well as important differences. The offer to write this review was the impetus to search for evidence of a meeting, but I have so far been disappointed. (My search for some tangible indication of their having interacted with one another is my excuse for tardiness in reviewing a book which those of you who read this review no doubt read long ago.)

In their published works, Thomson's references to Warner are exiguous, and I have so far found no reference to Thomson in Warner's publications. Inferences about their personal or scholarly relationship are speculative. The reason for the lack of definite evidence of their meeting, I have concluded, lies in the fact that, although they were both Radcliffe-Brown's students at Sydney University, they were there at the same time only for a very short period, if at all. Moreover, shortly after his study of the Yolngu, Warner returned to the United States and at the same time appears to have shifted his entire research interest to aspects of contemporary United States society and culture. However, and though rarely mentioned, there is no doubt that Thomson and Warner knew of each other's research and publications. It is the absence, in one case, and virtual absence in the other, of references to the other's work, in view of the long periods each had spent in Arnhem Land working with and knowing some of the same people, that seemed a conundrum and provoked me, and some other anthropologists who also spent time in Arnhem Land in subsequent decades, to look from time to time for some indication of their scholarly interaction.

Thomson reminded Radcliffe-Brown in a letter that he was his 'first Diploma student at Sydney'.8 He enrolled in the year long diploma course, presumably in March 1927 since he graduated in April 1928, and left immediately after completing the course for fieldwork on Cape York Peninsula. After eight months of fieldwork on Cape York Peninsula, he returned to Melbourne without stopping in Sydney,9 and in 1929 corresponded with Radcliffe-Brown from Melbourne.10 Radcliffe-Brown invited Warner to work with him in Australia in 192611 and Warner arrived in Sydney in January 1927. He left for fieldwork in Arnhem Land (presumably early) in March, having spent seven weeks studying with Radcliffe-Brown.12 He returned to Sydney in September 1927 to confer with Radcliffe-Brown and to write and plan future fieldwork. He left for the United States in 1929.

So what is the evidence for the relation between Thomson and Warner? In searching for direct evidence I have consulted only published sources - admittedly a far from exhaustive search - and, as noted above, found no reference to Thomson in Warner's work and only two references to Warner in Thomson's work, both in Thomson's book, Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land (1949). In that book Thomson criticised Warner's use of 'Murngin' to refer to the Yolngu:13

The arbitrary use of the term Murngin, 'tribe', for the people of Eastern Arnhem Land, which was introduced by Professor W. Lloyd Warner (A Black Civilisation; New York and London, 1937) is particularly unfortunate, for as was pointed out [in a lengthy earlier footnote,] east of Cape Stewart in North Central Arnhem Land tribal organisation is conspicuous by its absence from the intricate social organisation of the area ... The word murngin has nothing to do with social organisation, and is in no sense the name of a 'tribe'.14

In addition, Thomson's appraisal of the significance of Yolngu trade with the Macassans is explicitly opposed to Warner's. Warner concludes that Yolngu society and culture, including trade and exchange, had changed very little as the result of long contact with the Macassans.15 Thomson, on the other hand, believed that the Macassan voyagers had played a major role in the development of the 'great ceremonial exchange cycle' in the Yolngu area, and argued that:16

Professor Warner has missed entirely the tremendous importance of the impact of this Indonesian culture on the ceremonial life of these people in his review of Malay or Macassar contacts with the people of Arnhem Land...

There is no justification for the conclusion that the culture of the natives of Northeastern Arnhem Land showed a resistance to the influence of this virile culture from Indonesia, and certainly none for the statement that the ideas of these people were no different from what they were before he (the Malay seafarer) arrived.

There is little doubt that a ceremonial exchange system existed in Arnhem Land before the coming of the visitors from Indonesia ... but its orientation at the present time, and its most important 'drives' certainly owe much to the impact of Indonesian culture.

From Thomson's references to Warner in Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle, noted above, it is reasonable to infer that he believed his interpretations of other aspects of Yolngu society and culture differed significantly in many respects from Warner's. Consistent with this inference, a letter Thomson wrote in 1937 contains implied criticism of Warner's analysis of Yolngu society:17

The social grouping here is a mystery. It was studied in part by a previous worker who went astray I think in trying to fit it in to the known scheme of things - to try to discover an ideal and who was not content to study the schem[e] as it is in operation, to see the effects of this in various peoples and under varied conditions. (Peterson pp. 42, 44 fn 19)

Although as noted, Warner makes no published reference to Thomson,18 Mildred Warner's19 description of a seminar that led to discussion of 'the Murngin controversy' may have included mention of Thomson's work:

When the Berndts visited England in 1954 while Lloyd was teaching at Cambridge, a seminar was held in Meyer Fortes' rooms at Kings College. It was agreed in advance that the subject of Australian kinship would be avoided if possible, but of course this could not be. Edmund Leach attacked the Berndts with such force that everyone mustered to their defense. Australian kinship systems had lost none of their emotion.

Even though Thomson and Warner were in Sydney at the same time, their only obvious link was Radciffe-Brown, who appears to have had a very different relationship with each man. Almost immediately after Warner arrived in Sydney from the United States, Radcliffe-Brown was praising him, and he and Warner became close friends.20 And when Warner returned to Sydney after his first seven months of fieldwork, he and a friend shared an apartment with Radcliffe-Brown.21 On the other hand, Radcliffe-Brown was very critical of Thomson's interests and his potential as an anthropologist at the beginning of their association.22 It was only much later and in correspondence (Peterson this volume and 2006) that Thomson's desire for Radcliffe-Brown's friendship appeared to be reciprocated.23

The question of the relationship between Thomson and Warner (or lack of it) and of those between Radcliffe-Brown and Thomson and Warner is historically significant because of Thomson's nominal adherence to Radcliffe-Brown's model of Aboriginal social structure, and, probably related to that, his failure to engage directly with Warner's Yolngu material. Because of the vast amount of Thomson's ethnographic data on Yolngu and their quality, anthropologists inevitably have asked why he did not publish them. Peterson has suggested what seems a plausible explanation for Thomson's not publishing his data, namely Thomson's 'isolation from other anthropologists and relationship with Radcliffe-Brown' (p. 42).

The nature and effect of the differences between Warner and Thomson might further be divined from unpublished sources including the invaluable Thomson collection in the Museum of Victoria. That collection has been a source of inspiration (in some cases, the main source) for the papers in Donald Thomson, the Man and Scholar, the splendid book edited by Bruce Rigsby and Nic Peterson.

The 16 chapters in Donald Thomson, the Man and Scholar, began as papers presented at the Donald Thomson Centenary Anniversary Symposium held at the University Melbourne in 2001 under the sponsorship of the Museum of Victoria (p. v). The collection is important as the first book-length assessment of the work and intellectual contribution of an individual scholar to anthropology. Yet the editors' judgement that a 'full assessment will not be possible for a long time to come because so much of [Thomson's] research contribution is in the form of unpublished field notes and his vast and magnificent collection of material culture and photographs, most of which has still to receive detailed attention' (p. 1) is clearly borne out. A bonus of the book is reading the interesting dialogue between the editors and the authors that appear in the many 'Editors' Note' endnotes.

The title of the book reflects its focus on the relationship between Donald Thomson as a person and the evolution of his many facetted career. The editors (pp. 2-3) remark in the introductory chapter that a full biography of Thomson remains to be written,24 and they give only a brief framework (and a timeline pp. 243-244) as a guide to the chapters to 'provide an understanding of the man and scholar'. The guide is important to bear in mind since the authors of the chapters draw on the results of the activities that engaged Thomson's professional life and reveal the twinned passions of natural science exploration and collecting that motivated him. The tremendous energy he invested to achieve accuracy and completeness meant that the material objects he collected are meticulously documented and linked to detailed text describing their manufacture and use and sometimes even their history. And Thomson's observations of Aboriginal life and his recordings of interviews produced an enormous amount of linguistic evidence. The authors of all chapters attend to issues of context as did Thomson and are sensitive to the physical and social environment in which Thomson was working and his interaction with that environment.

A symposium that celebrates a public life inevitably draws contributors who had a special relation to that person and his interests and achievements. In the case of Thomson, the diversity of contributors' interests reflects the range of Thomson's, yet I think it is reasonable to see the chapters as falling into four broad categories: ethnography, relations to other anthropologists, and the discipline of anthropology (Chase, Peterson, Gray, Rigsby, Sutton, Borsboom); material culture including photography (Allen, Hafner, Hamby, Memmott and Fantin); advocacy including public education (Attwood, West); and natural history (Yen and Coventry, Temby). One chapter falls outside these categories (Playne on illustrations that five women artists created for Thomson's material collection). All authors speak of Thomson's personal involvement with the subject or subjects. In what follows the focus is mainly on the chapters in the first category, which reflects my own proclivities.

Peterson has spent perhaps more time than any other anthropologist has working with the Thomson collection, and that opportunity informs his evaluation of Thomson's place in Australian anthropology. Peterson (pp. 29-30) frames his survey of Thomson's work in terms of the three geographic areas in which Thomson undertook field work and in the chief focus of each area: Cape York Peninsula, in which his focus was sociocultural organisation; Arnhem Land, in which his focus was on ecological, economic, and policy topics; and the Central Australian desert area, with a focus on material culture and ecology. Although Thomson's contributions in each of these areas were substantial, Peterson concludes that it is the vast collection of material objects, photographs, unpublished manuscripts and field notes, that is the greatest contribution, and that establishes his place in Australian anthropology:

They can only come to be valued more and more highly by both indigenous and non-indigenous people as the years go by. It is in the context of the collection that the minute particulars of his hundreds of pages of fieldnotes come into their own through their close relationship with the objects and images. This relationship will ensure that Thomson's ethnography will continue to breath [sic] vitality into anthropological research on the classical cultures and societies of Cape York Peninsula and Arnhem Land for the foreseeable future and that his work will never be forgotten. (p. 43)

Peterson (p. 42), as noted above, also speculates on the reasons why Thomson did not publish or complete for publication his vast corpus of Arnhem Land material on myth, ritual, magic, ceremony, painting and kinship; he suggests that it was principally because Warner published A Black Civilization in 1937, when Thomson was completing his intensive research among the same people on the same topics, thus pre-empting Thomson's publication of material on the same topics.

In Thomson's Cape York Peninsula writings, Chase finds his natural science training and interests both in his photographs, which portray 'natural humanity in seamless interaction with the biophysical environment' (p. 20), and in 'his anthropological use of the term "ecology" as early as 1946 ... at a time when such interests were only just beginning to be considered in American anthropology' (p. 21). Somewhat contentiously Chase argues that Thomson's evolutionary perspective was very close to that of Tylor:25

it is not so much biological Aboriginal humans who are primitive, but their culture. He clearly has a dualistic view of human existence which sees 'culture' as an entity which evolves through stages quite separate from biology. [He also sees] northern Cape York Peninsula as an area in possible transition to a higher cultural stage through contacts across the Torres Strait in both the material and social dimensions of culture through selective competitive success. (pp. 25-26)

Thomson was a vocal opponent of assimilation and an early advocate of land rights, and as do the other authors in this collection, Chase finds evidence for Thomson's regard for Aborigines as 'real people for whom he had obvious deep affection and respect, and with whom he had great and memorable personal experiences' (p. 26).

Thomson's isolation from his Australianist colleagues has been widely noted. Gray (p. 84) says that Thomson's 'marginalisation' in Australian anthropology was the result of his estrangement from the Australian National Research Council (ANRC) and his conflict with Professor AP Elkin, who became Chair of the Sydney University's Anthropology Department in 1933, and he describes three events (which may be seen as series of related events) to substantiate his argument: Thomson's argument about funds with the honorary secretary of the ANRC, who subsequently was found to have misappropriated ANRC funds and who committed suicide, Thomson's advocacy of segregation for Aborigines and opposition to a policy of assimilation, and his opposition to Elkin over the Woomera Rocket range. Gray aims to provide a nuanced reading of the conflict between Thomson and Elkin, but the nuancing arguably results in a portrayal of Elkin that is more sympathetic than that provided of Thomson. Gray equates Thomson's argument for segregation, with its implied focus on remote areas of the Northern Territory, with apartheid, which as policy was adopted only by South Africa, and he seems to overlook the opposed values and aims of the two governments' actions in relation to their indigenous peoples. By the 1970s Thomson's argument for the maintenance of Aboriginal identity and culture had become more influential than Elkin's argument for assimilation.

Thomson's contribution to anthropological linguistics is substantial, although as consistently remarked with respect to all of Thomson's work, more for the very large corpus of texts he carefully transcribed than for his linguistic analysis of them. Rigsby, however, remarks that Thomson's published 'papers stand out for their attention to the form and function of language and speech in culture and social life' and that Thomson 'regarded language learning and recording (that is, transcription and glossing) as an important part of doing ethnography and social anthropology' (pp. 129, 130).

Rigsby (p. 130) has made the study of the languages of Cape York Peninsula one of his special areas of research, and, as an anthropological linguist, he judges that Thomson's understanding of Kuuku Ya'u and Umpila improved during the period 1928-1935 and that his transcriptions are reasonable. Rigsby has focused on the linguistic analysis of the difficult Lamalamic language and during the past three decades has spent a great deal of time working with the Lamalala people in the area of Port Stewart as well as constructing a narrative of Thomson's time and the information he recorded with the people there, which includes unpublished papers, fieldnotes and photographs. Rigsby (pp. 136-139) convincingly exemplifies Thomson's role as linguistic anthropologist and finds that his 'fieldnotes ... include data and comments bearing on a number of topics which linguistic anthropologists later developed more fully'. Thomson's 'innate language-learning ability and feeling for the fuller meanings of what people say to and with one another enabled him to do excellent work on matters of language and speech, despite his lack of formal linguistic training'. Rigsby also points out that recent and current research in native title and related issues has revealed the importance of Thomson's linguistic and linguistic anthropological work (p. 139). Rigsby's copious endnotes (p. 140-142) are a delightful coda to his chapter.

Thomson made the first of two short visits to Flinders Island in 1928; during his second visit, in 1935, he recorded linguistic, genealogical, and territorial information from interviews with the few people who remained in a camp on the island. Sutton's (p. 148) work on the data that Thomson recorded in connection with his research on the Flinders Island Language segues to noting another purpose Thomson had in writing his findings and to reflect on the relationship that anthropologists have had (and have) with the Aboriginal people they have worked with and become close to and how variously they report their observations in different contexts. Thomson who was appalled by the treatment that Aboriginal people received at the hands of pearlers, sandalwood cutters, missionaries, and pastoralists, and angered at government administrators' inaction or forced removals, became 'well known for his criticisms of Aboriginal administrative policy and practice' (p. 149). Sutton finds a:

consistency between Thomson's first field observations in 1928 and the recurring pattern of his involvement in later events, right through to his public engagement in moves to reform Aboriginal affairs in Victoria towards the end of his life. (p. 151)

In this regard, Sutton observes both parallels and differences in the responses of McConnel, Mountford and Stanner (pp. 149-154). In a fitting conclusion, Sutton remarks:

[Thomson's] sensitivity to the grossness of so many men of the outback in the Depression probably cannot be separated out from this general pattern of a fine-tuned sensibility, combined with his passionate hatred of injustice. His political position on indigenous affairs ... arose from a deeply aesthetic appreciation as much as a moral stance. The destruction of Aboriginal culture which he witnessed at first hand entailed the killing of something beautiful, for base motives of gain, or for arrogant proselytising, or for government control. (p. 154)

Thomson remarked in notes he wrote at Gaarrtji in 1937 during his extensive research in Arnhem Land that, 'If a man could but follow all that takes place when a yarkomirri (important) man dies he would understand almost all of the culture of these people'. At Yirrkala in 1969, during mortuary rites for a senior Yolngu man, Daymbalipu Mununggurr told me that I had to understand that 'death is an important part of Yolngu life'. Boorsboom (p. 160, citing Peterson 1976), who had been at Gaarrtji in the early 1970s and in 1998, quotes Thomson's fieldnote and says, 'This observation has lost none of its validity'. I imagine that no anthropologist who has worked in north-east Arnhem Land would dissent, or disagree with Boorsboom's observation of changes that have occurred - new means of transport and communication, but more significantly shift in emphasis from secondary burial rites in grave posts to ritual at the time of burial including cleansing rituals (p. 161). Boorsboom also found Thomson's apt descriptions of 'the dynamics of Aboriginal sociality and the ways people identify themselves in any given context' remarkable because Thomson was writing when anthropological explanations were cast in terms of the 'structural-functional language of clans, tribes and languages . terms that refer to bounded, essentialist and exclusive entities which did not reflect the social reality of Arnhem Land of his time nor the social reality of Arnhem Land today' (pp. 161, 169).

Thomson's importance as an advocate for Aboriginal rights in the 1930s and 1940s is counterpoised to Elkin's role in Aboriginal affairs by Attwood, who also observes that Thomson's 'distinctive perspective, unlike Elkin's, became increasingly influential with the passing of time' (p. 183). Attwood links Thomson's advocacy directly to his observing, in 1928, the acts of an autocratic mission superintendent at Aurukun and his frustrated attempts to bring about change. During the years between 1928 and the late 1960s, the political environment in Aboriginal affairs in Australia changed as did receptiveness to Thomson's advocacy for the maintenance of Aboriginal identity and culture, so that toward the end of his life, 'political positions he had championed and which had once seemed beyond the pale were moving to centre stage' (p. 174).

Although Thomson and Warner may never have met and thus never had a conversation about Yolngu, I think that had such an exchange occurred, they would have found they had much in common - and it would have been based on their admiration and affection for the Yolngu people and their culture.

*·········

Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson are to be thanked for making the proceedings of the symposium available in print. The book is well presented - photographs, as befits a book about Donald Thomson, are splendid (I especially like the one of Thomson on the cover). The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia is to be thanked for undertaking its publication. A couple of quibbles: the binding is not as good as it should be, and copy editing could have been more carefully done. However, neither of these shortcomings seriously distracts from appreciation of the book.

Nancy Williams

University of Queensland

Footnote

1 In 1969, Professor Stanner told me he thought that Yolngu remained the most intact Aboriginal society in Australia and subsequently I found no reason to question his assessment.

2 M Warner 1988: 204-208.

3 My fieldnotes 19 June 1970, Thomson passim, and letter from Mrs Dorita Thomson 3 March 2007 enclosing photographs taken on board the airplane on 19 June 1970.

4 Warner 1958: xi.

5 Thomson 1949: footnote on title page.

6 Peterson 1983: 2.

7 M Warner 1988: 1.

8 This was Thomson's claim in a letter to Radcliffe-Brown in 1948; Peterson, who writes about the correspondence between Thomson and Radcliffe-Brown between 1948 and 1954, says that Thomson 'was in the first small cohort of Radcliffe-Brown's students in Australia, and the first to graduate with the Diploma in Anthropology in 1927': Peterson 2006: 17.

9 Gray says, 'On his return from Cape York Peninsula, Thomson passed through Sydney at the end of the year without visiting Radcliffe-Brown' (p. 85).

10 Peterson 1983: 2, 2003: 3.

11 M Warner 1988: 1. Warner's widow gives this account (perhaps retold many times) of the invitation: In May 1926 in Berkeley at a dinner meeting where Radcliffe-Brown was the honoured guest, Radcliffe-Brown 'called down the table to Warner, then a graduate student, "I say, Warner, how would you like to come to Australia with me? ... If you are interested let's get together and talk."'

12 M Warner 1988: 21.

13 Thomson 1949: 11.

14 Warner, however, said that he used 'Murngin' only as a convenient label: 'the tribe can hardly be said to exist in this area ... The people do not think of themselves under this name or classification. The word has been used by me as a general term for all of the eight tribes in the area and for the groups of people located in the central part of the territory of the eight tribes. I have seized upon this name as a convenient and concise way of talking about this whole group of people; had any of the other tribes who possess the particular type of social organization found in this area been located in the center of the group, I should have used the name of that tribe rather than Murngin.' Warner 1958: 15 n2.

15 Warner 1958: 430-433, 453-471.

16 Thomson 1949: 85-86, 91-92.

17 Letter in Mrs Dorita Thomson's possession.

18 A number of accounts have been given to explain why none of Warner's field notes survive. His widow writes, 'When I went to my husband's offices at Michigan State University to remove his files in early fall of 1970, nothing remained - banks of files accumulated through forty years had disappeared' (Warner 1988: vii). Although university officials instigated a search that included the building, the archives, and Warner's first offices, his widow decided to write a biography of Warner, apparently assuming that the files would never be found.

19 Warner 1988: 27.

20 Warner 1988: 21-22.

21 Warner 1988: 32-35.

22 Radcliffe-Brown explicitly compared Thomson unfavourably to Warner; see Gray this volume (p. 86).

23 Thomson's need for Radcliffe-Brown's approval apparently led him to continue to write as though Radcliffe-Brown's model of Aboriginal social organisation were adequate, while his own data and interpretations consistently revealed the model's inadequacy. It is a matter of regret that in 1949 Thomson did not respond to Radcliffe-Brown's recommendation that he contact Stanner, who had promised Radcliffe-Brown to help Thomson: 'I feel that in Melbourne you are very isolated. Now that Stanner is returning to Australia you might be able to forget your military conflict with him and get together with him on Australian anthropology ... If you can succeed in making friendly contact with him you would find him, I think a congenial and helpful colleague. He has one thing in common with you, his appreciation of the blackfellow' (Peterson 2006: 23).

24 They point to other publications about aspects of Thomson's work where 'the main developments, events and features of his career' have been described.

25 See, for instance, Editors' Notes in the endnotes to Chase's chapter.

References

References

Peterson, Nicolas 1983, 'Preface' to Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land by Donald Thomson, compiled and introduced by Nicolas Peterson, Currey O'Neil Ross Pty Ltd, South Yarra, Victoria.

- 2003, Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land by Donald Thomson, compiled and introduced by Nicholas Peterson, rev edn, The Migunyah Press, Melbourne University.

- 2006, '"I can't follow you on this horde-clan business at all": Donald Thomson, Radcliffe-Brown and a final note on the horde', Oceania 76(1): 16-26.

Thomson, Donald F 1949, Economic Structure and the Ceremonial Exchange Cycle in Arnhem Land. Macmillan & Co Limited, Melbourne.

Warner, Mildred Hall 1988, W. Lloyd Warner Social Anthropologist. Publishing Center for Cultural Resources, New York.

Warner, W Lloyd 1937, A Black Civilization; a Social Study of an Australian Tribe. Harper & Brothers, New York.

Warner, W Lloyd 1958, A Black Civilization; a Social Study of an Australian Tribe, rev edn, Harper & Brothers, New York.