author
Roy Franklin Barton
1883–1947
An American ethnologist, anthropologist, and dentist, he became known for vivid, firsthand studies of the Ifugao people of the northern Philippines. His writing brings early 20th-century fieldwork to life while preserving important records of law, ritual, and daily life.
1 Audiobook
Ifugao Law (In American Archaeology and Ethnology, Vol. 15, No. 1)
by Roy Franklin Barton
About the author
Born in 1883 and dying in 1947, Roy Franklin Barton was an American researcher whose work centered on the Philippines, especially the Ifugao people of northern Luzon. Although he was also trained and known as a dentist, he built a strong reputation as an ethnologist and anthropologist through close field observation and detailed writing.
Barton published influential studies on Ifugao custom, religion, and law, and he also wrote for general readers. One of his best-known books, The Half-Way Sun, drew on his time living among communities often described in older sources as "headhunters," while works like Ifugao Law helped document social systems that outside readers knew very little about.
His career appears to have been unusually wide-ranging, including research connections beyond the United States as well as the Philippines. Today he is remembered less as a conventional academic figure than as a careful observer whose books remain valuable for readers interested in anthropology, colonial-era history, and the cultures of the Cordillera region.