Physical anthropology of the Lenape or Delawares, and of the eastern Indians

In Physical anthropology of the Lenape or Delawares, and of the eastern Indians in general, Aleš Hrdlička offers a systematic anthropometric study of the Lenape within the wider bodily variation of eastern Indigenous peoples. The book assembles measurements, skeletal observations, and comparative data in the empirical style characteristic of early twentieth-century physical anthropology. Its method is classificatory and documentary, reflecting a period when scholars sought to define population history through anatomy; read today, it is valuable both for its data and as an artifact of the scientific assumptions of its age. Hrdlička (1869–1943), a Czech-born American anthropologist associated with the Smithsonian Institution, was one of the most influential physical anthropologists in the United States. His training in medicine and deep investment in human origins, racial typology, and museum-based research shaped this work decisively. The book emerges from his broader effort to map the peopling and variation of the Americas, an effort driven by the era's confidence in measurement as a path to historical knowledge. Recommended for historians of anthropology, Native American studies scholars, and readers interested in the history of scientific method, this volume rewards careful, critical reading. It is best approached as both a source of information and a revealing document of its disciplinary moment.