Hocken Digital Collections

Skinner, Henry Devenish : Papers

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Reference NumberARC-0484CreatorSkinner, H.D., 1886-1978DescriptionThe collection consists primarily of material relating to H.D. Skinner's archaeological, anthropological, and ethnological work with the Otago Museum and the University of Otago. It includes significant series of subject files. These consist primarily of handwritten research and lecture notes, newspaper clippings and typescripts. It also includes papers relating to museums, collecting, and a number of scientific organisations, papers and photographs relating to archaeological and anthropological field-work, particularly papers relating to South Island rock and cave paintings. There are also a number of articles and research papers, including papers relating to the collection of Skinner's academic articles entitled 'Comparatively Speaking'. The collection includes a copy of S. Percy Smith's 'Notes of a journey from Taranaki to Mokau, Taupo, Rotomahana, Tarawera and Rangatikei'. It also includes personal correspondence from Skinner's school days and his military service during World War I, and correspondence relating to anthropology, archaeology, and the collection of Māori artifacts, including letters with Elsdon Best and Willi Fels, and other notable anthropologists and collectors. As well as financial records, there are papers relating to H.D. Skinner and his family, including testimonials, academic records, and wartime scrapbooks.
Only a small part of this collection is digitised and available through Digital Collections. Information about other items can be found on the Hākena catalogue, through the Library Catalogues link above.History / BiographyHenry Devenish Skinner was born at New Plymouth on 18 December 1886, the youngest child of Margaret Bracken Devenish and William Henry Skinner, a surveyor for Crown Lands with a keen interest in Māori 'curios'. H.D. Skinner inherited his father's love of ethnology and collecting. In 1902 he was sent to Nelson College as a boarder, and he searched for artefacts with friend James Richmond, a past-time that was further developed by a visit to Dunedin in 1906 under the guidance of Jack Simcox. After studying law at Victoria, he enrolled for a BA at Otago, a move prompted partly by his meeting Eva Gibbs, whose family subsequently moved to Dunedin. As anthropology was not then offered, he studied zoology, achieving outstanding results. Volunteering for military service in 1914, Skinner served in the Gallipoli campaign, was mentioned in dispatches and awarded the DCM. He was discharged in late 1915. Eva joined him in England in 1916, and they married on 4 December; they were to have two sons, the first being stillborn. Skinner enrolled as a postgraduate to study anthropology at Cambridge University under A.C. Haddon and Baron von Hugel. His research concerned Māori and Moriori material in British Museums and resulted in seminal papers on the evolution of Māori art. Skinner returned to New Zealand in 1918, becoming assistant curator at the Otago Museum. He was appointed lecturer in anthropology, the first in Australasia. He was also Hocken Librarian from 1919 to 1926. While he set up an archaeological section of the Otago branch on the New Zealand Institute about 1924, and supported the fieldwork of others, his primary research was ethnological, focussing on classification of objects on the basis of morphological characteristics. He researched and published an influential work on the Moriori, and developed a classification of polynesian adze typology. His most active research period was prior to World War II. He retired as reader in anthropology in 1952 and as museum director in 1953, and was awarded a CBE in 1956 and an honorary DLitt by the University of Otago in 1962. A festschrift was published in 1959, and a volume of his papers, 'Comparatively Speaking', was published in 1974. Eva died in 1963; Skinner died at Ross Home, Dunedin, on 9 February 1978.
(From: Dictionary of New Zealand Biography)

Photograph

Two men digging

Depicts Or Relates To

SubjectsAnthropologyArchaeologyEthnologyMāoriMorioriMāori - ImplementsMāori HistoryArt, MāoriRock paintings

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Skinner, Henry Devenish : Papers

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