Winifred Susan Blackman
| Winifred Susan Blackman | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |||||||
| Born | 1872 | ||||||
| Died | 1950 | ||||||
| Residence |
24 Bardwell Road, Oxford [A63] 34 Bardwell Road, Oxford [1919] 22 Bardwell Road, Oxford [1927] 8 Aigburth Drive, Sefton Park, Liverpool [1935] 36 Sharia Madrasset el-Tewfikia, Shubra, Cairo, Egypt [1937] | ||||||
| Occupation |
egyptologist archaeologist anthropologist | ||||||
| |||||||
Contents
Notes
Office Notes
House Notes
1920.05.18 proposed by R.R. Marett, seconded by Henry Balfour
Notes From Elsewhere
Winifred Blackman (1872-1950) was the older sister of Aylward Manley Blackman (1883-1956), both of them were Egyptologists, archaeologists and anthropologists. They were the children of the Reverend James Henry Blackman, a vicar; and one of five children. She was born in Norwich. The family moved to Oxford when she was over thirty and some ten years later she registered to study at the Pitt Rivers Museum from 1912 to 1915 where she took the Diploma in Anthropology at the University. She also volunteered working on the museum catalogues from 1912 to 1920.
Her voluntary work at the Pitt Rivers Museum is recorded in various Museum Annual Reports. In 1915 she started work cataloguing the lighting appliances owned by Henry Balfour in greater detail:
The card-catalogue has been continued steadily. Miss Blackman has catalogued the valuable collection of spear-throwers, and was engaged in cataloguing a very large collection of primitive lighting-appliances which will eventually be added to the Museum. [Annual Report for 1915]
Work on the catalogue by Miss Blackman continued in 1916, where again reference was made to accessioning the appliances 'shortly' in the annual report for the year. In 1920, when she was aged forty-eight, she was granted the status of research student to carry out scientific work in Egypt under the auspices of the Committee for Anthropology.
She spent much of the 1920s and 1930s living and working in Egypt until the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939. She often collaborated with her brother Aylward, according to http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2000/481/bk3_481.htm the only book she published was 'The Fellahin of Upper Egypt' in 1927 and her 'meticulous records and fragmentary manuscripts are archived, together with 4,000 photographs, in the Department of Archaeology, University of Liverpool, England (where her brother was appointed a professor in the 1930s)'. The same site comments:
Some of Blackman's subjects are esoteric, such as belief in magic, the evil eye and evil spirits (afarit ), while others -- agriculture, industry and everyday village life -- are more mundane, interweaved with topics as diverse as personal adornment and "the law of revenge." But the anthropologist was also a literary alchemist, transforming each chapter into a multi-faceted gem. Such is the abundance of detailed description, the vivid imagery, the apposite quotations or songs, the relevant anecdotes, the historical context and the fluid narration, that we are drawn into, and fascinated by, each successive chapter to the extent that we feel that we were there with her.
She served as Librarian in the Department of Social Anthropology, Oxford for several years. She published several articles in Folklore. Her first was published in 1916 and her final paper there was published in 1924. She was a member of the Folklore Society, Royal Anthropological Institute, Royal Asiatic Society and Oxford University Anthropological Society.
[Alison Petch]
Publications
External Publications
The Fellahin of Upper Egypt' 1927
House Publications
Related Material Details
RAI Material
Other Material
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