Identity area
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Date(s)
- 1970 - 2000 (Creation)
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Extent and medium
8 type 1 boxes and 1 type 3 box
Context area
Name of creator
Biographical history
Born in Arkansas, USA, David Hyndman studied at the University of Colorado, and completed his MA at the University of Idaho. In 1972, he moved to Australia to pursue his PhD at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland. His doctoral thesis on the Wopkaimin people of the Ok Tedi area of Papua New Guinea was completed in 1979.
He studied subsistence, ethnotaxonomy, ethnobotany, mining and Indigenous peoples, and biodiversity conservation. He completed several periods of fieldwork in the region from 1973 through the 1980s. He spent a good deal of research on the effects of the Ok Tedi mine on the surrounding area, both socially and environmentally.
From 1989-1992, Hyndman worked with the T'boli people of Mindanao in the southern Phillippines. Hyndman was a lecturer and later a reader at the Department of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Queensland, from which he retired in 2001, moving to the Canberra region.
Repository
Content and structure area
Scope and content
This series chiefly working materials of David Hyndman (plus a few holiday photos). This include a large body of slides and photographs generated largely during field work in Papua New Guinea among Wopkaimin speakers in the mid 1970s and again in the early 1980s while studying the environmental impact of the Ok Tedi mine. There is also photographic material from the Philippines, focused on the southern Cotabato region. Hyndman also recorded some twenty-nine audio cassettes during his early field work in Papua New Guinea - these include songs, storytelling, and zoological samples. e.g. frog calls. His recordings are cross referenced and sometimes transcribed in his field notebooks, of which over forty are included in this series. In addition the series contains preparatory material for publications and botanical information.
The series also contains material generated by others, notably ethnologist Wilson Wheatcroft, who provided Hyndman with translations of traditional stories and legends of the Tifalmin people of Papua New Guinea.
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Researchers must sign an access agreement.
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Dates of creation revision deletion
Processed by David Romney Smith February 2026.