Mary Clifton Ayres Fieldnotes and Recordings, 1966-1991 (MSS 113)

Mary Clifton Ayres was born on August 17, 1953. She received her B. A. in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Wisconsin in 1974, an M.A. in Social Anthropolgy from the University of Chicago in 1978, and earned her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology, also from the University of Chicago in 1983. Her dissertation was entitled This Side, That Side: Locality and Exogamous Group Definition in Morehead Area, Southwestern Papua.

Ayres conducted research in Papua New Guinea from October 1979 through October 1981, with funding from the National Science Foundation. Her fieldsite was in the Morehead area of Western Province, Papua New Guinea. This is the same area in which F. E. Williams, a government anthropologist, conducted fieldwork from 1926-1932. Williams' fieldwork results were published in his book, Papuans of the Transfly (Clarendon, 1936). Williams' work, however, was among Nambu dialect speakers, while Ayres' work concentrated on speakers of the Tonda dialect. Thus, Ayres' work provides an important complement and contrast to Williams' earlier description of the area, as well as providing an important ethnographic description of present-day culture in the Morehead area. In addition to Ayres' original fieldnotes, copies of F. E. Williams Trans-Fly fieldnotes from the National Archives of Papua New Guinea are also contained within the collection.