Manuscript and printed textual material, photographic prints and negatives, slides, audio tapes, film, original and reproduction artwork, maps, scrapbooks, and historical and natural artifacts related to the history of African exploration and natural history, dating primarily from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Includes correspondence, drafts of publications, diaries, account books, ephemera, posters, newsclippings, biographies, memoirs, portraits, and the former personal property of selected explorers, big game hunters, missionaries, pioneers, and naturalists in Africa.

The Historic Engravings collection is comprised of 154 pages of engravings, dating from 1747 to circa 1905. The engravings depict subject matter related to Africa and Africans.

This manuscript probably represents what Horatio Hale originally intended to publish on southern Africa in his Philology and Ethnology that is one of the volumes of the report of the United States Exploring Expedition (Wilkes Expedition). It includes several vocabularies, comparative vocabularies, and notes on the location and appearance (especiall...

The papers in the Abbott collection appear to have been brought together in the Smithsonian's Department of Anthropology in order to process ethnological specimens from Malaya and Indonesia and to prepare an exhibit and publications. Included are some of Abbott's original letters, notes, maps, and a considerable number of photographs. Most of these materials concern the Enggano, Jakun, and Dyak. Many other documents in the collection consist of copies of or extracts from Abbott's letters, the originals of which are now in the Smithsonian Institution Archives. There are also letters and other materials of Otis Tufton Mason and Walter Hough accumulated as they worked on the collection, many simple lists of accessions compiled in the Department of Anthropology, and a few manuscripts. In addition, there are printed materials that were apparently used by the department's staff for reference purposes. Some of the photographs made in Borneo in 1914 are by Henry Cushier Raven, a field assistant of Abbott and, later, a collector financed by Abbott. Additional materials of Abbott and Raven are in the Smithsonian Institution Archives, and their material (often duplicate photographs) are included in several collections in the National Anthropological Archives.

The collection dates from 1678 to circa 2005 and consists of 58 maps, engravings, posters, original documents and photographs related to East, Central and South Africa. There is a special focus on Ethiopia (Abyssinia), Tanzania and the Sudan, and the collection's subjects include East African geography, history, political affairs and African leaders, as well as European (German, Italian, British) and American colonization, exploration and warfare in Africa.

The Marilyn Houlberg Haiti Collection includes negatives, audio cassettes, video reels, prints, CDs, DVDs, field books, and manuscript materials, including lecture/research files and correspondence, which were created from the 1970s to circa 2012 by Houlberg and focus on the arts and culture of Haiti, especially those of the Afro-Caribbean religion of Voudou.

William F. Wheeler papers and photographs of Efe Pygmies. A large part, if not all, of these materials are associated with the 2004 exhibit of Wheeler's Efe Pygmies photographs and artifacts at the San Diego Museum of Man titled "Efe: Archers of the Congo." This collection consists of mounted photographs (20 x 30 inches and 11 x 17 inches); text pa...

Photographs documenting Liberian people and their natural and built environments, including the Saint Paul River, rock formations, barricades, dwellings, and other structures.

Photographs made by William F. Wheeler during his expeditions to Africa in July 1986, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1998, mostly documenting the Efe of Akokora in the Ituri forest. Photographs relating to the Efe people of Akokora in the Ituri forest include images of Efe people, camps, musical instruments, dances, archery and poison arro...

Postcards collected by Leo Frobenius (1873-1938), who was an eminent German ethnographer, scholar and writer. He founded the Frobenius-Institut in Frankfurt, which exists to this day. It is likely that he collected them during his 1926 expedition to explore rock painting in the Nubian desert, which took him to Upper Egypt and to the Sudan. Another possibility is that he collected the cards on one of his later expeditions to North Africa or even purchased them in Europe. Eleven postcards belong to a series published by G.N. Morhig, the English Pharmacy in Khartoum, a town Frobenius must have visited during his 1926 expedition. They depict peoples in the Sudan (Nubians, Arab, Shilluk, Tonga, Bari and Jur) and their various dress and adornment. Two photographic postcards by M. Venieris depict a dance, and, Ab del gadir-Wad Halomia, "the rebel of April 1908," clearly is republished from an earlier image. The remaining postcards are part of the typical Orientalist depictions of women and children. J. Geiser of Aligiers is one of the publishers.