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Donald Thomson, the man and scholar
 Edited by Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson
Published by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia with support from Muesum Victoria. 277pp, paperback, 222 x 247mm. ISBN 0908290217. 2005.
Donald Thomson’s work and name are now well known only to regional specialists, but in the 1930s and 1940s he was very much in the public eye for his advocacy of Aboriginal rights, for his contributions to ornithology and ecology, and for his journalism.
Living with Aboriginal people beyond the frontier in Cape York and Arnhem Land, he combined his training in anthropology and natural science with his love of photography, to create one of the nation’s greatest collections of Aboriginal artefacts. His brilliant photographs of people making and using them in daily life bring the objects alive, and add a special dimensionto the Collection. At the same time he made important collections, photographs and observations on birds, fishes, lizards, mammals and snakes.
The essays in this richly illustrated volume examine aspects of his contribution across these fields
in Australia.
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$49.90 per copy, which is inclusive of GST, postage and packaging (Australia).
To order your copy, contact the Academy on <assa.accounts@anu.edu.au>
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Contents
 Acknowledgements
Maps
1. The man and scholar, an introduction
Bruce Rigsby and Nicolas Peterson
2. Anthropology through a biological lens
Athol Chase
3. Thomson's place in Australian anthropology
Nicolas Peterson
4. ‘A photographer of brilliance’
Lindy Allen
5. Ecologist and public educator
Ian Temby
6. Thomson's contribution to our herpetology and entomology knowledge of central Australia
Alan Yen and John Coventry
7. A deep-seated aversion or prudish disapproval: Relations with Elkin
Geoff Gray
8. Anthropology, Aboriginality and Aboriginal rights
Bain Attwood
9. The Lake Tyers Aboriginal community and assimilation policy and practice
Alan West
10. The languages of Eastern Cape York Peninsula and linguistic anthropology
Bruce Rigsby
11. Science and sensibility on a foul frontier: At Flinders Island, 1935
Peter Sutton
12. Thomson at Gaarrtji
Ad Borsboom
13. The first biographer of baskets
Louise Hamby
14. The study of indigenous ethno-architecture in Australia
Paul Memmott and Shaneen Fantin
15. Images of Port Stewart: Interpreting Thomson’s photography
Diane Hafner
16. The line drawings, paintings and painted photographs in five women artists
Moira F. Playne
Appendix 1: Authors and addresses
Appendix 2: Donald Finlay Fergusson Thomson - a timeline
References
Index
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