his earlier argument for Mathews' importance. This was published as a three-part journal article titled "R. H. Mathews: His Contribution to Aboriginal Studies". A draft "Part IV" in the University of Sydney Archives indicates that Elkin was planning further writings on Mathews before his death in 1979. Another early champion was Norman Tindale who found Mathews' understanding of topography and cartography invaluable to his project of mapping tribal boundaries. The bibliography of Tindale's Aboriginal Tribes of Australia reveals the extensive use he made Mathews' writings. Tindale wrote in 1958 that in "going through Mathews' papers for the purpose of checking the second edition of my tribal map and its data, I have been more than ever impressed with the vast scope and general accuracy of this work. Despite earlier critics I am coming to believe that he was our greatest recorder of primary anthropological data." Disagreement about the value of Mathews' work has continued. In a 1984 article the historian Diane E. Barwick, made a damning appraisal of Mathews, criticising his Victorian research for perpetrating a "sometimes ignorant and sometimes deliberate distortion [that] has so muddled the ethnographic record …". Barwick claimed that from 1898 Mathews "contradicted, ridiculed or ignored" the "careful ethnographic reports" of Howitt for whom he had an "almost pathological jealousy". The contemporary anthropologist Deborah Bird Rose and colleagues take the opposite view, describing Mathews as "a more sober and thorough researcher" than Howitt. They claim that "Mathews did not share Howitt's penchant for suppressing the particular in favour of the grand theory, or for suppressing women in favour of men." Unusually for a male anthropologist, he acknowledged "the existence of women's law and ritual." The enactment of Native Title legislation in Australia has created new interest in Mathews' work. His writings are now routinely cited in Native Title claims put forward by Aboriginal claimants. Notes Citations Sources Further reading External links Robert Hamilton Mathews papers 1841 births 1918 deaths Australian anthropologists Linguists from Australia