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- Dr S F Nadel
- Also known as
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Dr S F Nadel
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primary name: Nadel, Siegfried Frederick
- Details
- individual; academic/intellectual; anthropologist; British; Austrian; Male
- Life dates
- 1903-1956
- Address
- 58 Boundary Road (1935)
Druesden East, Gerrards Cross, Bucks.
London School of Economics, Houghton St., Aldwych, WC1(1948)
c/o Australian National University (London Office) 27 Russel Square, W.C.1. (1950)
- Biography
- Siegfried Frederick (Fred) Nadel. Anthropologist. Educated in Austria, but later naturalised British citizen. PhD Vienna in music. His interest in ethnomusicology took him to the LSE in 1932 ; PhD London in 1935 on the Nupe; Nadel’s work on the Nupe in Nigeria began in London in 1933 (sponsored by the Rockefeller Foundation) and he worked in Nigeria between 1934-6; his book on the Nupe was published in 1942. His work on the Nuba in Kordofan followed in 1938 where he was appointed Government anthropologist in the Sudan. He studied ten distinct tribes, three of them on his first tour from May 1938 to May 1939 over a full year's cycle, and the seven others for an average period of about two months each (on his return to the Sudan in November 1939 after five months furlough). His Nuba book was written in 1940-1 and published in 1942. In 1941 he entered the British army, and served in Eritrea and Ethiopia. In 1946 he was demobilised, and was appointed Senior Lecturer in the LSE. In 1948 he moved to Newcastle (part of the University of Durham), and in 1950 he was appointed Professor of Anthropology in the Australian National University in Canberra. He died unexpectedly of a heart attack in 1956. His wife and daughter survived him.
5 groups of material from him are in BM. Three are Nupe (registered 1935, 1938, 1950) and two Nuba (1939 and 1948).
The objects in his Nupe collection were collected between 1934-8. He made two expeditions there – one in 1934, the other in 1935-6, and he must have returned via northern Nigeria en route to the Sudan in 1938.
His gift in 1935 (Af1935,0205.1 to 3) must come from the 1934 expedition.
1938,0402 are from second expedition 1935-6. On this expedition he was based in Bida, but also stayed at Kutigi, a large village to the west of Bida. Also at Mokwa and Sakpe, both smaller villages, plus Jebba Island on the Niger. He also visited the nearby related Gbari, the Kakanda and Bassa for purposes of comparison; he also visited Ilorin, Ibadan and Lokoja to see Nupe settlers there.
1950,36.1 to 39 is also largely Nupe material (with a few Sudanese objects added at end). These were sold to the BM on his move to Australia in that year; the Nupe objects might come from either Nupe expedition. Those from Rabah north-east of Sokoto were collected in 1938, when he was en route to Kordofan.
The second two groups in the BM were of Nuba material. The first group (Af1939,30.) came from the first visit in 1938. Another group followed after WWII (1948,06.). This is mostly Nuba, but some non-Nuba were tacked on the end: these must come from his later work with the Sudan administration from 1940-4.
- Bibliography
- Obituary by J D Freeman, ‘Oceania’, XXVII 1956, pp.1-12.
(wrote)
Black Byzantium (on the Nupe in Nigeria), 1940
The Nuba, an Anthropological Study of the Hill Tribes in Kordofan, 1947.
(wrote) “Glass-making in Nupe " (with G. S. Seligman), ‘Man’, Vol. XL, 1940, no.107, pp. 85-6.