Daniel Sutherland Davidson (July 9, 1900—December 26, 1952) was an American anthropologist who also did important work among theAustralian Aborigines in the 1930s.
Davidson was born inCohoes in New York in 1900, the son of a travelling salesman, Matthew H. Davidson and his wife Laura (Sutherland).[1] He studied at theUniversity of Pennsylvania graduating in 1923, and taking successively a Master's (1924) andDoctoral degree in anthropology (1928). He was appointed instructor[2] at his alma mater, remaining there, apart from a brief stint at theUniversity of Buffalo for the academic year 1932-1932, until 1946. He spent a year at theUniversity of Oregon before accepting a professorship at theUniversity of Washington where he taught until his untimely death three years later.[3]
Davidson's initial research focused, under the direction of his mentorFrank Speck, on theeastern Algonquian, where he developed an archaeological approach. Already with hisdoctoral dissertation however his deep interest in the indigenous population of Australia emerged as he applied the diffusionist model of theage and area theory to antipodean ethnographical materials.[3] His doctoral thesisThe Chronological Aspects of Certain Australian Social Institutions as inferred from Geographical Distribution was subject to a scathing critique[a] at the time by one of the major authorities on Australian ethnography,A. R. Radcliffe-Brown.[1][5]
A grant from theAmerican Philosophical Society enabled him to do fieldwork over nearly two years in northern Australia (1930-1931), followed up by a further stay in 1938–1939. Over this time, Davidson managed to gather a list of native vocabularies amounting to some 4200 words, collected from informants speaking 19 different languages of Western Australia. Much of this material has yet to receive close attention from researchers.[6]
In 1938 he publishedA Preliminary Register of Australian Tribes and Hordes together withAn Ethnic Map of Australia, a magisterial synthesis of his close sieving of the available ethnographic materials regarding Aboriginal groups.[3] He followed this up with a monograph in 1941 onAustralian tribal string figures,[7] exhibiting aprestidigitator's mastery for replicating such designs which he had already demonstrated in a paper he had published in a 1927 paper on string figures among theVirginian Indians.[8]
Davidson also retrieved unpublished manuscript material written byEdith Hassell on the myths of theKoreng tribe ofWestern Australia, and edited it for publication over 1934[9][10] and 1935.[11][12][1]
