Before the field: colonial anthropology reassessed

The introduction to this special issue argues for a reappraisal of colonial anthropology in the broader historiography of British anthropology. It challenges the continuation of the centre–periphery model that has positioned colonial ethnographers and their Indigenous authorities as awkward, peripheral figures in the history of the discipline, and posits that, while the evolutionist tomes of the 19th century are now of purely historical value, the colonial texts, permeated as they are with Indigenous presence, remain relevant for Aboriginal people and current anthropology. In particular the introduction suggests that the impetus for British scholars to set out for ‘the field’, subsequently defined as the proper site of anthropological endeavour, came from the challenges to evolutionism by colonial ethnographers and Indigenous authorities working in situ and in close contact.