Elizabeth Jacobs

Who was Elizabeth Jacobs?

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, 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. 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.