Southern Anthropology - A History of Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai

Southern Anthropology, the history of Fison and Howitt's Kamilaroi and Kurnai argues that Kamilaroi and Kurnai (1880) is a landmark text in the history of the discipline. Using extensive unpublished material explored from a historical and anthropological perspective, Southern Anthropology explores Fison and Howitt's early work on kinship and social organization in Oceania. The book is focused particularly on their use of Lewis Henry Morgan's kinship schedule which they modified through the 1870s. Working through mediators throughout the Australian continent and the Pacific Islands, Fison and Howitt explored whether the peoples of the region could be plotted to the evolutionist schemas of the northern theorists. Their findings were a challenge to the method, analysis and theories of the anthropology of the 1870s and their work remains significant to contemporary anthropology.

Helen Gardner is a historian of the nineteenth Pacific Islands and Australia with a focus on Christian Mission and the history of anthropology in the region. She has recently extended her research to the role of the churches and missions in the history of the decolonisation of the Pacific Islands.

Patrick McConvell is an anthropologist and linguist with particular interests in Indigenous Australia, interdisciplinary prehistory and kinship. He is engaged with the ARC Discovery Project 'Kin and Skin' (AustKin).