Research Catalog

Title

Where the roads all end : photography and anthropology in the Kalahari / Ilisa Barbash ; foreword by Paul Theroux.

Author

Barbash, Ilisa, 1959-

Publication

Cambridge, Massachusetts : Peabody Museum Press, Harvard University, [2016]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Theroux, Paul

Description

xxx, 274 pages : illustrations, maps (some color); 27 cm

Summary

"Where the Roads All End" tells the remarkable story of an American family's eight anthropological expeditions to the remote Kalahari Desert in South-West Africa (Namibia) during the 1950s. Raytheon co-founder Laurence Marshall, his wife Lorna, and children John and Elizabeth recorded the lives of some of the last remaining hunter-gatherers, the so-called Bushmen, in what is now recognized as one of the most important ventures in the anthropology of Africa. Largely self-taught as ethnographers, the family supplemented their research with motion picture film and still photography to create an unparalleled archive that documents the Ju/'hoansi and the /Gwi just as they were being settled by the government onto a "Bushman Preserve." The Marshalls' films and publications popularized a strong counternarrative to existing negative stereotypes of the "Bushman" and revitalized academic studies of these southern African hunter-gatherers. This vivid and multilayered account of a unique family enterprise focuses on 40,000 still photographs in the archives of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Illustrated with over 300 images, "Where the Roads All End" reflects on the enduring ethnographic record established by the Marshalls and the influential pathways they charted in anthropological fieldwork, visual anthropology, ethnographic film, and documentary photography.--

Subject

• Marshall family
• Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. Archives > Photograph collections
• 1900-1999
• San (African people)
• Ethnological expeditions > Kalahari Desert > History > 20th century
• Ethnology > Kalahari Desert > History > 20th century
• Visual anthropology > Kalahari Desert > History > 20th century
• !Kung (African people)
• G/wi (African people)
• Kalahari Desert > Social life and customs > 20th century

Genre/Form

History

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Foreword: Families in the field / by Paul Theroux -- Introduction: Where the roads all end -- 1. From Cambridge to the Kalahari -- 2. Bushman mythology and Bushman anthropology -- 3. The early expeditions, 1951-1953 -- 4. Expedition photographers -- 5. The middle expeditions, 1955 and 1956 -- 6. Iconic Bushmen -- 7. The later expeditions, 1957-1961 -- 8. Changes in the Kalahari -- 9. Photographic legacies -- Appendix A. Expedition members -- Appendix B. Photo gallery of expedition members.

ISBN

• 9780873654098
• 0873654099

LCCN

^^2016021067

OCLC

• 946907408
• SCSB-10061802

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library