Librarian
Anthropological Primary Sources
My own fieldwork with Sri Lankan forest monks was different again (Carrithers 1983). I lived in Sri Lanka for nearly three years, but only occasionally among the monks: after all, they live in the woods to get away from people.
Primary sources used in anthropological research span many shapes and forms. One prominent research output in this field is field notes. Below, some options for exploring primary sources in the anthropological study of religious culture are presented to ignite your own creative thinking.
Field Notes
Below are some repositories you can search within for field notes created by other anthropologists to use in your research.
- Guide to Anthropological Fieldnotes and Manuscripts in Archival RepositoriesMore than 850 collections of ethnographic fieldnotes and manuscripts in non-Smithsonian archives.
- Guide to the Collections of the Smithsonian's National Anthropological ArchivesHistorical and contemporary anthropological materials that document the world's cultures and the history of anthropology.
- Guide to the Human Studies Film ArchivesComprehensive, geographically arranged guide to more than 8 million feet of ethnographic film and video acquired by the NAA before 1994.
Devotional Texts
The Diamond Sutra is the oldest dated, printed text. It was printed using woodcuts in 868. It features a sacred Buddhist prayer—one of the most influential Mahāyāna scriptures in fact. A wonderful illustration of the historical Buddha addressing his elderly disciple Subhūti, surrounded by an assembly gathered under a grove of trees accompanies the text, an illustration meant to prompt spiritual reflection in service to devotional rituals, thereby fleshing out the way in which we would imagine an 9th century Buddhist interacting with this religious text in form and action.
- Mission Santa Clara Music ManuscriptsThe main manuscript in this collection is this large Choirbook for which Father Narciso Durán, from Mission San José, was the scribe. According to Craig Russell the Mission Santa Clara Choirbook, along with two other written by Father Durán, “constitute the richest and most invaluable anthologies of music from the mission period.”
Musical Performance
Music is deeply a part of religious ceremony and ritual. There are many ways to search for and access music for your chosen topic. Of course YouTube can be a great option.
Below there is an embedded video of a Gamelan performance recorded in Peliatan Bali Indonesia in 1985. Gamelan is part of Balinese Hinduism ceremonies. You can find similarly helpful videos of performance to use as primary source material.
Tobacco / Plants
National Anthropological Archives
- Tubatulabal Sound Recording (Harrinton Papers)3a Coyote and Sun Myth, Section 4 3d How Indians Prepared Tobacco
3b How Indians Got Pinyon Nuts, Section 1
3c Same, Section 2
Five Crow women wearing blankets and walking in a line. Published as Tobacco Ceremony—Apsaroke
Data Sources
- the Digital Archaeological Record (tDAR)"tDAR is an international digital archive and repository that houses data about archaeological investigations, research, resources, and scholarship. tDAR provides researchers new avenues to discover and integrate information relevant to topics they are studying. Users can search tDAR for digital documents, data sets, images, GIS files, and other data resources from archaeological projects spanning the globe. For data sets, users also can use data integration tools in tDAR to simplify and illuminate comparative research."
- Association of Religion Data Archives (ARDA) This link opens in a new windowFormerly American Religion Data Archive.
Project funded by the Lilly Endowment, Inc. and acts to preserve and improve access to quantitative data on American religion. Includes data on churches and church membership, religious professionals, and religious groups (individuals, congregations and denominations).