Archives and Library Holdings at The Field Museum
The Berthold Laufer Papers: 1898-1934. For inquiries about these materials, please email archives@fieldmuseum.org
Descriptive subject catalogue of books in the Chinese and Japanese language belonging to the Laufer collection. For inquiries about these materials, please email reflib@fieldmuseum.org.
Search WorldCat Discovery for books from the Laufer collection held in the Library's Rare Book Room. For inquiries, please email reflib@fieldmuseum.org.
Archives outside Field Museum
Berthold Laufer began his career at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH) in New York. Visit AMNH's website to learn more.
Pairs of of recordings on wax cylinders featuring vocalists on one cylinder and an orchestra on the other performing Chinese folk and opera music in Shanghai were collected and recorded by Laufer in 1901; the cylinders are part of the University of Indiana-Bloomington collections.
Notable Japanese Collections in North America: an online tool that identifies, maps, and helps to promote notable Japanese Studies collections at various libraries and cultural institutions in North America.
The Naxi or Nakhi, one of the many non-Chinese speaking ethnic groups retaining a writing system of pictographic script. (c) Field Museum of Natural History. Image no. A113387c, Cat. no.1693416. Courtesy of John Weinstein.
Suggested Readings
Bekken, Deborah et al. 2019. “Berthold Laufer and the East Asian Collections” In 125 Moments in the Natural History of the Field Museum. Edited by Franck M Mercurio. Chicago: Field Museum.
Bronson, Bennet. 2003. “Berthold Laufer.” In Curators, Collections, and Contexts: Anthropology at the Field Museum. Fieldiana: Anthropology. 36: 117–126.
Chen, Adrienne. 2009. “Laufer’s China Development. Draft of Potential Labels for Exhibit.” Unpublished manuscript.
———. 2009. “Laufer Letter Notes.” Unpublished manuscript.
Hummel, Arthur. 1936. Berthold Laufer: 1874–1934. American Anthropologist. 38: 101–111.
Joshua A. Bell and Erin L. Hasinoff. 2015. "A Most Singular and Solitary Expeditionist: Berthold Laufer Collecting China." In The Anthropology of Expeditions: Travel, Visualities, Afterlives, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pp. 60-90.
Latourette, K.S. 1936. Biographical Memoir of Berthold Laufer: 1874–1934. Presented to the National Academy of Sciences.
Laufer, Berthold. 1912. The Chinese Madonna in the Field Museum. The Open Court. 26(1): 1–6.
———. 1930. “Chinese Bells, Drums and Mirrors” The Burlington Magazine for Connoisseurs. 57(331): 183–187.
Niziolek, Lisa et al. 2019. “Cyrus Tang Hall of China.” In 125 Moments in the Natural History of the Field Museum. Edited by Franck M Mercurio. Chicago: Field Museum. pp 348–351.
R. Rarnell and F. W. Gleach. 2014. "China to the Anthropologist!": Franz Boas, Berthold Laufer, and a Road not taken in Early American Anthropology. In Anthropologists and Their Traditions across national Borders. Histories of Anthropology Annual vol. 8 Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 1-40.
Walverens, Hartmut. 1980. “Berthold Laufer and His Rubbings Collection,” In Journal of the American Oriental Society. 100 (4): 519–522.
Bibliography of publications on Berthold Laufer written by librarian and scholar Hertmut Walravens. (In German.)