416 Part V: Southeast Asia
tion” (Daston and Galison 1992). He published his findings from Borneo and
the Torres Straits in 1901 in Head-Hunters: Black, White and Brown. The Sarawak
material was based on the itinerary Hose had prepared for him, illustrating the
mutual support of early anthropology and imperialism:
It included excursions by boat along rivers and into the wilderness, visits to
interior villages, religious ceremonies and opportunities to collect artifacts.
Hose’s guests also attended a peace-making ceremony that attracted more
than 6,000 members of many different ethnic groups. The gathering was
organized as a means of pacification and of addressing tensions between
the different ethnic groups under the control of the colonial administration.
The event was doubtless also staged to serve Hose’s position of authority
among local people. (Chiarelli and Guntarik 2013; Haddon 1901)
Some of these photographs have been reproduced by Chiarelli and Gun-
tarik (2013), to whom they appear “mediocre” and “unremarkable.” There are
shots of rivers from boats and of curious villagers gazing at the photographer. At
least the photos appear unstaged, with no attempt at faux “authenticity” by
keeping foreigners out of sight, a very common practice later on. White jacketed
expeditioners in pith helmets mix with local people in traditional garb. Already
at that time there were “best practices” being written up in a scientific publica-
tion called Notes and Queries in Anthropology, and Haddon managed the section
on photography, but he does not seem to have followed his own advice in Bor-
neo (with his “mediocre and unremarkable” shots and foreigners in full view).
Perhaps because Borneo was an excursion at the end of his primary work in the
Torres Straits, and several of his companions had already departed, Haddon
was himself disappointed in the Borneo images (Chiarelli and Guntarik 2013).
Another regret is worth noting. At this time (the end of the nineteenth cen-
tury) scientists were attempting to put the identification of “races” and “tribes”
and “ethnic groups” on a scientific footing. The hope was that this could be
accomplished through biological data, and so fieldworkers like Haddon spent a
great deal of time taking anthropometric statistics, identifying skin color, height,
and head and face measurements. As Haddon writes in Head-Hunters: Black,
White and Brown, “One of our objects in visiting Sarawak was the hope that by
measuring a large number of people, and by recording their physical features,
we might help towards a solution of the ethnic problems” (Haddon 1901:320;
quoted in Chiarelli and Guntarik 2013). A measure called the “cephalic index”
was a ratio of head width to height that produced three types: long-headed (dol-
ichocephalic), medium-headed (mesocephalic), and short-headed (brachyce-
phalic). There was an effort to classify the many inhabitants of Borneo into two
original races in another widely read book by Haddon (The Races of Man and
Their Distribution, 1909), but this effort was soon abandoned by anthropology.
Even the term “tribe” became so laden with controversy and mistaken assump-
tions that it has been largely abandoned as a technical term. It continues to be
used as a rather generic term for nonstate cultural or ethnic groups of all types
throughout much of Asia (as in the “Hill Tribes” of Thailand).