Kenneth Emory

Kenneth Pike Emory (November 23, 1897 – January 2, 1992) was an American anthropologist who played a key role in shaping modern anthropology in Oceania. In the tradition of A. L. Kroeber and other pioneering anthropologists who trained him, Emory's works span all four major fields of anthropology: archaeology, physical anthropology, ethnography, and linguistics.

With fellow scientist Gerrit P. Wilder, Honolulu botanist, and Mrs. Wilder, historian; Dr. Armstrong Sperry and Dr. Stanley Ball, he was part of the Bishop Museum scientific research party who sailed to the South Pacific on Mr. and Mrs. Kellum schooner Kaimiloa.

Kenneth Pike Emory was born November 23, 1897 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts. He moved to Hawaii when he was two and grew up there, traveling first to Dartmouth and then continued his education afterward at Harvard then received his Phd. from Yale. While he was a high-school student, several archaeological digs in the Honolulu area piqued his interest in Polynesian artifacts and culture. Proselytizing in the first half of the nineteenth century by Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Mormon missionaries had been so successful that by the 1920s Polynesians had abandoned their ancestral gods in all but a few isolated places. When Emory realized this, he dedicated his life to finding and documenting as much pre-Christian Polynesian culture as he could. After attending Dartmouth College, he became associated with the Bishop Museum.

In 1924, with a group of Hawaiian scientists (including Gerrit P. Wilder, botanist; Mrs. Wilder, historian; Dr. Armstrong Sperry, writer and illustrator; Dr. Stanley Ball), he joined the four masted 170-foot 512 tons vessel Kaimiloa in Honolulu for a five-year expedition, reaching many of the then inaccessible spots of the Pacific. The vessel was a complete floating laboratory, possibly the most complete of any craft that has undertaken a similar trip. Bottles, crates, and boxes are stowed below along with gallons of preservatives for insects and plant specimens for the Bishop Museum. He then spent the next 60 years roaming the Pacific, seeking out Polynesian settlement sites, excavating relics, and photographing petroglyphs. He sought out Polynesians who remembered the pre-Christian chants and rituals, and recorded them on film. By the 1950s, he had become the world's foremost expert on Polynesian culture.

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