Norman Tindale

Norman Barnett Tindale AO (12 October 1900 – 19 November 1993) was an Australian anthropologist, archaeologist and ethnologist. He worked for the South Australian Museum for almost 50 years. He is best known for his work mapping the various cultural groupings of Indigenous Australians.

He was born in Perth, Western Australia. His family moved to Tokyo in 1907, when he was a young boy. Norman was educated at the American School in Japan.Tindale links , American School in Japan The family returned to Perth in 1915, and then moved to Adelaide in 1917. Tindale got a job at the Adelaide Public Library. In January 1919, he got a job at the South Australian Museum as entomologist's assistant to Arthur Mills Lea.E. G. Matthews, 'Lea, Arthur Mills (1868 - 1932)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 10, Melbourne University Press, 1986, pp 31–32. Retrieved on 17 July 2009 He had already published thirty-one papers on entomological, ornithological and anthropological subjects before receiving his Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Adelaide in March 1933.

Tindale began mapping the cultural groupings of Indigenous Australians early in his career. His interest in this began during a research trip to Groote Eylandt in 1921–1922. On the island, an Anindilyakwa man gave Tindale detailed descriptions of which land belonged to his family and which land did not. This led Tindale to question the widely held belief among European Australians at the time, which was that Aboriginal people were nomadic and had no connection to any specific area. Tindale's maps have been superseded by more accurate ones.

After his retirement from the South Australian Museum, Tindale began teaching at the University of Colorado. He lived in the United States until his death, aged 93, in Palo Alto, California.

Awards
 1956: Verco Medal of the Royal Society of South Australia
 1967: Honorary doctorate from the University of Colorado
 1968: Australian Natural History Society Medallion
 1980: John Lewis Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia
 1980: Honorary doctorate from the Australian National University.

Tindale was made an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 1994, shortly after his death.Officer of the Order of Australia , 26 January 1994, Citation: For service to anthropology, particularly through the study of traditional Aboriginal society.

References

 Other websites 
 Norman Tindale website at Australian National University
 Norman Tindale  at the South Australia Museum
 Tribal Boundaries in Aboriginal Australia , the map of Aboriginal language-group boundaries by Norman Tindale
 Tindale Genealogical Collection  at the State Library of Queensland

Category:1900 births
Category:1993 deaths
Category:Australian social scientists
Category:Anthropologists
Category:Archaeologists
Category:People from Perth, Western Australia
Category:Order of Australia
Category:University of Adelaide alumni
Category:Ethnologists
Category:Scientists from Western Australia