Elizabeth Derr Jacobs was an anthropologist specializing in the native cultures of the Pacific Northwest. She is known particularly for her work on the Nehalem Tillamook, the northernmost subgroup of the Tillamook

Tillamook

Tillamook may refer to:Places:* Tillamook County, Oregon, United States* Tillamook, Oregon, a city in the United States* Tillamook River, United States* Tillamook Bay, a bay in the northwestern part of Oregon...

, whom she studied in the 1930s. She then turned away from anthropology to pursue a career as a psychotherapist, returning to anthropology after her retirement in 1975.

Jacobs had no formal training in anthropology but came to it via her marriage to anthropologist Melville Jacobs

Melville Jacobs

Melville Jacobs was an American anthropologist known for his extensive fieldwork on cultures of the Pacific Northwest. He was born in New York City. After studying with Franz Boas he became a member of the faculty of the University of Washington in 1928 and remained until his death in 1971...

. As a result, she sometimes neglected topics of traditional interest to anthropologists, such as place names, ethnobiology, and material culture and focussed on topics traditionally given less attention, particularly the lives of women.

Publications

• Nehalem Tillamook Tales. University of Oregon Monographs, Studies in Anthropology No. 5. Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1959
• The Nehalem Tillamook: An Ethnography. Edited by William R. Seaburg. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, 2004.

External links