Beatrice Blackwood

Beatrice Mary Blackwood (3 May 1889 – 29 November 1975) was a British anthropologist, who ran the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford from 1938 until her retirement in 1959.

Early life and education Beatrice Blackwood was born in London on 3 May 1889, daughter of the publisher James Blackwood. She studied in Germany and there learnt German, Latin and Greek. Blackwood completed a degree in English Literature and Language at Somerville College, Oxford in 1908–1912. After returning to Oxford to study for the diploma in anthropology in 1916, she gained a distinction at which time Ms. Blackwood took both the BA and MA in the same day. In 1923, she also earned a B.Sc. in Embryology. In 1924, Blackwood travelled to North America on a Laura Spelman Rockefeller Fellowship to study anthropology in Native American, African-American, Asian and Caucasian societies.

Career Blackwood was promoted to a University Demonstrator and Lecturer in Ethnology at Oxford upon her return in 1928. Elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London (FSA) in 1943 Awarded the Rivers Memorial Medal by the Royal Anthropological Institute in 1943

Selected publications A Study of Mental Testing in Relation to Anthropology. Mental Measurement Monographs 4. Baltimore, Maryland: Williams & Wilkins, 1927. . Both Sides of Buka Passage: An Ethnographic Study of Social, Sexual and Economic Questions in the North-Western Solomon Islands. Oxford: Clarendon-Oxford University, 1935. . The Technology of a Modern Stone Age People in New Guinea. Pitt Rivers Museum. Occasional Papers on Technology. Oxford: Oxford University, 1950. . The Classification of Artefacts in the Pitt Rivers Museum Oxford. Pitt Rivers Museum. Occasional Papers on Technology 11. Oxford: Oxford University, 1970. . Rev. ed. Schuyler Jones. The Origin and Development of the Pitt Rivers Museum. 1991. . The Kukukuku of the Upper Watut. Ed. from published articles and unpublished field-notes by C. R. Hallpike. Pitt Rivers Museum. Monograph Series 2. Oxford: Oxford University, 1978. .