Disclaimer: The Field Museum's online Anthropology Collections Database may
contain cultural items and historical records that are culturally sensitive. Some records may
also include offensive language. These records do not reflect the Field Museum’s current
viewpoint but rather the social attitudes and circumstances of the time period when items were
collected or cataloged. Visitors to this site are also advised that some records may contain
names, images, and recordings of deceased individuals and that some records document human remains.
In the interest of protecting sensitive items and information from the North American collections,
most North American records have been temporarily removed from the online Anthropology Collections
Database. If you have an inquiry, please submit a
Visit and Information Request form.
We welcome feedback. The web database is not a complete record of the Museum's
anthropological holdings and documentation for a collection item will vary due to when and how it
was collected as well as how recently it was accessed. While efforts are made to ensure the
accuracy of the information available on this website, some content may contain errors. We work
with descendant communities around the world to interpret the collections in order to promote a
greater understanding of global heritage and, through consultation, will remove information that
is inaccurate or inappropriate. We encourage and welcome members of descendant communities,
scholars, and others to contact us to confirm or clarify data found here.
To begin searching the entire Anthropology Collections Database click on the “Start Searching” button.
The Keyword search will assist you in identifying a collection by collector, site, region, or culture.
Specific search fields can be found under Basic and Advanced search options. These searches are 'equal to' searches and will only find exact, case-sensitive matches in those specific fields (e.g. North America, not north america).
Once a search is conducted, use filters to narrow down your search by material type, cultural attribution, country, or if a record has an image.
Be sure to remove a filter if you want to do a broader search.
More Artifact Information
Additional collection specific artifact databases and searches can be found under the "Collections Homepage" tab.
Information about individual collections datasets can be found under "External Data Sources" on the site home page
Downloading
There are two options for downloading a .csv of selected data available on buttons on the bottom right of the page. The simple download gives you a general overview of each specimen, the extended download has more fields.
Attempts to download more that 4000 records will not complete.
