| Summary: | The Andamanese were the indigenous hunters and gatherers of the Andaman Islands. Comprising thirteen distinct ethnic groups at the beginning of the twentieth century, by late in the century only nineteen individuals remained. Thirteen documents have been included in the AZ02 Andamans file. These documents fall roughly into two groups on the basis of field dates and tribes studied. The earliest group contains the two major monographs in the file, Radcliffe-Brown and Man, plus a third monograph, Temple. These works focus primarily on the Andamanese tribes of Great Andaman. Man is the first important study; it was written by a government official who observed the Andamanese during the period 1869-1880 when their social and cultural life was still largely intact. Man's data pertain mainly to the Aka-Bea tribe of South Andaman, with a coverage of general ethnography, physical anthropology, and language. Temple was a government official who was in the area at the turn of the century (1901). His data are primarily on demography and geography, but include some ethnography and linguistics, drawing heavily on Man's work for the latter. Radcliffe-Brown is by a distinguished social anthropologist who presents a functional analysis of social organization, religio-magical beliefs and practices, and mythology. Unfortunately, by the time of Radcliffe-Brown's field work in 1906-1908, the Andamanese were at an advanced stage of population decline and socio-cultural disintegration, so he was unable to get a clear, detailed picture of the traditional society in operation. Radcliffe-Brown studied mainly the North Andaman tribes, plus the A-Pucikwar and Akar-Bale of the southern group. By the time the remaining nine documents were written, based on field work in the late 1940s, early 1950s, and later, the Andamanese were nearly extinct, and thus much of the material in these works deal primarily with the Ongees (Onges) and Jarwas (Jarawas).
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