The papers of Margaret Mead span the years 1838-1980, the bulk largest from about 1911, when her earliest writings begin, to 1978, the year of her death. Mead's personal and professional activities are documented by correspondence, field data, research material, office files, publications, papers of colleagues, and other matter. The collection is divided into series which reflect, as far as possible, Mead's own filing order. Similar material may be found in more than one series and inconsistencies in filing are not uncommon due to the complexity of Mead's schedule and the frequency with which her office assistants (mostly students) came and went over a span of nearly fifty years.

Mead's early life, education, and interests can be traced in diaries and notebooks, 1911-1920, and in other material included in the Family Papers series. Papers from her college years at DePauw, Barnard, and Columbia, 1919-1925, include class notes, exercises, writings, memorabilia, and yearbooks. Correspondence with her immediate family, which included Mead's paternal grandmother, Martha Adaline Ramsay Mead, indicate the cultural environment in which Mead was raised. Exchanges with her parents, Edward Sherwood Mead and Emily Fogg Mead, are frequent and informative, focusing on family matters and occasionally on contemporary events. Writings, research material, teaching files, general correspondence, clippings, and other items exist for these and other family members. The earliest material in the Family Papers, dated in the 1830s, consists primarily of the correspondence of Mead's ancestor Fanny Fogg Clary. Other significant nineteenth-century family letters are found in the papers of Mead's grandparents, Giles F. Mead and Martha Mead, both of whom were educators. For later years, there is correspondence with many other family members including Mead's husbands Luther Sheeleigh Cressman, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson, daughter Mary Catherine Bateson, sisters Priscilla Mead Rosten and Elizabeth Mead Steig, brother Richard Ramsay Mead, and aunt Fanny Fogg McMaster.

The Special Correspondence series, 1914-1979, includes letters sent and received primarily from professional colleagues who were also associated with Mead on a personal level. Collaboration on projects and publications or shared interest in anthropological field areas often characterized these relationships. Among the correspondents are Jane Belo, Ruth Benedict, Edith Cobb, Wilton Dillon, Marie Eichelberger, Milton H. Erickson, Erik H. Erikson, Lenora Foerstel, Lawrence K. Frank, Geoffrey Gorer, Barbara Honeyman Heath, Margaret Lowenfeld, Rhoda Bubendey Métraux, G. Frederick Roll, Lola Romanucci-Ross, Theodore Schwartz, and Martha Wolfenstein. Additional papers of many of these individuals are found elsewhere in the collection, notably in the South Pacific Ethnographic Archives or the Papers of Colleagues series described below.

Mead's own arrangement of the General Correspondence series, 1909-1979, has been retained so that readers can follow her work chronologically while being able to locate letters from specific correspondents in the alphabetical file within each year or group of years. Some correspondents of particular relevance to Mead's life and work were college roommates and friends such as Léonie Adams, Leah Josephson Hanna, Eleanor Pelham Kortheuer, Louise M. Rosenblatt, and Katharine Rothenberger; important contacts in anthropological fieldwork such as Sir Frederick Beaumont Phillips and E. W. Pearson Chinnery, government anthropologist from New Guinea; Peter Henry Buck and Kenneth Pike Emory of the Bishop Museum in Hawaii; and Katharane Edson Mershon, Walter Spies, and Madē Kalēr, who assisted Mead and Bateson in their initial fieldwork in Bali in the 1930s. Other professional colleagues represented include John Dollard, Mary Shattuck Fisher, Raymond William Firth, Frank Fremont-Smith, Margaret E. Fries, Clifford Geertz and Hildred Geertz, Herbert Ian Hogbin, G. Evelyn Hutchinson, Phyllis Mary Kaberry, Clyde Kluckhohn, Alfred L. Kroeber, Harold Dwight Lasswell, Robert Harry Lowie, Philip E. Mosely, William Fielding Ogburn, Douglas L. Oliver, and John Wesley Mayhew Whiting.

The Curriculum Vitae file, 1925-1979, contains biographical information and letters of recommendation in support of educational, employment, grant, and fellowship applications by students, colleagues, friends, and family. Items related to the achievements and qualifications of applicants are supplemented by correspondence.

Mead's activities in a wide range of organizations are documented in both the Organizations File and Special Working Group series, chiefly dated 1940 to 1978 and revealing involvement with professional associations as well as other groups ranging in concern from health and nutrition to cybernetics and ekistics. Mead's American Anthropological Association (AAA) files include correspondence with Gregory Bateson, Eliot Dismore Chapple, A. Irving Hallowell, Melville J. Herskovits, Clyde Kluckhohn, Alfred L. Kroeber, Kurt Lewin, Robert Harry Lowie, Sol Tax, and others. In addition to correspondence, there are drafts of presentations given at AAA functions as well as programs and administrative papers, particularly for 1960 when Mead served as president of the organization. The most voluminous files in these series are for Mead's work with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Particularly significant are her contributions to the Committee on Science in the Promotion of Human Welfare. The materials are most extensive for the years 1975-1976, when Mead served first as president and later as chair of the Board of Directors. These files provide insight into Mead's philosophy on race, technological change, population, and world peace.

Beginning in 1934 with the Hanover Seminar, Mead became involved with interdisciplinary work study groups, the most notable of which are represented by files in the Special Working Group series, 1931-1978. She and Gregory Bateson applied their anthropological field training to culturally related problems of World War II, joining with other concerned social scientists to form the Committee for National Morale under the direction of Arthur Upham Pope. However, most of Mead's wartime contributions evolved from her duties as executive secretary of the National Research Council's Committee on Food Habits. In later years she worked with professionals from other disciplines in such groups as the World Federation for Mental Health, the World Health Organization, and the World Society for Ekistics. Following the death of Ruth Benedict in 1948, Mead became coordinator of the Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures projects, in which interdisciplinary teams were assembled to study world cultures from sources available primarily in the United States. Through analysis of literature, film, interviews with immigrants, and other research material, thousands of documents were amassed on the cultural traits of the peoples of China, Czechoslovakia, France, Poland, Russia, Syria, Turkey, and other countries. There were also cross-cultural studies on Jewish culture and on children. Documents for this project and its successor studies on Chinese political character and human ecology, Soviet culture and communication, and German national character are in the Projects in Contemporary Cultures series.

The Scheduling File, 1928-1979, includes appointment books and memoranda and folders containing correspondence, abstracts of lectures, and related items for speaking engagements, personal appearances, conferences, office appointments, and other activities. Mead's practice of conducting office business while on her trips resulted in unrelated material being filed with scheduling papers. A list of folder headings is filed in the first box of the folders.

Mead continued to publish prolifically throughout her life. The Publications and Other Writings series, 1923-1980, includes a nearly complete set of her published and unpublished work. Interviews with Mead are found here as well as in the Scheduling File, and writings by others, often about Mead, follow the year-by-year arrangement. Full bibliographic details of Mead's publications are available in Margaret Mead: The Complete Bibliography, 1925-75 , edited by Joan Gordan (The Hague: Mouton, 1976), and in lists of later publications filed in the first container of this series.

Teaching was an important part of Mead's life. At Columbia University her courses included culture and communication and the methods and problems in anthropology. She was also instrumental in establishing the Department of Anthropology at New York University and chaired the Social Sciences Division at Fordham University's Liberal Arts College at Lincoln Center. The Teaching File, 1927-1978, includes material concerning these and other institutions where Mead lectured both graduates and undergraduates, training students to become more active observers of their environment. Course descriptions, bibliographies, student papers and projects, and correspondence document her approach to education and teaching style.

For more than fifty years Mead was a member of the professional staff of the American Museum of Natural History, where she served successively as assistant and associate curator, curator, and curator emeritus of ethnology. Papers relating to her work at the museum and office memoranda for other activities constitute the first part of the Office File, 1925-1980. Following these administrative papers are a series of subject files for areas of continuing interest. Among the more personal items relating to Mead are awards, biographical clippings, financial papers, notebooks, wills, and other items in the Miscellany series, 1924-1979. Meriting special attention are 180 personal notebooks, 1940-1978, in which Mead recorded various items of information from schedule reminders to detailed transcriptions of conference proceedings and personal interviews.

A separate series documents the activities of the Institute for Intercultural Studies, 1937-1980, formerly the Council on Intercultural Relations, founded in 1941 by Lawrence K. Frank, Edwin R. Embree, Gregory Bateson, and Margaret Mead. Another war-related activity, this group focused originally on national character studies of countries antagonistic to the United States, notably Germany and Japan. The institute continued to conduct other national character studies as well as related research after World War II and later became a source of grant funding for culturally oriented research projects.

The extensive field research of Margaret Mead and other anthropologists with whom she worked, including, Gregory Bateson, Jane Belo, Reo Fortune, Lola Romanucci-Ross, and Theodore Schwartz and Lenora Foerstel has been assembled in the South Pacific Ethnographic Archives series, 1925-1978. Field expeditions to American Samoa, Bali, and present-day Papua New Guinea are well documented by correspondence, diaries and notebooks, notes, catalogs, indexes, and other items. Mead and Fortune's field expedition among the Omaha (Umonhon) Tribe of Nebraska in 1930 is placed at the end of this series. Census data, linguistic notes, psychological testing material, and other descriptive items exist for many of the peoples represented in the archives. The Manus of Pere Village in the Admiralty Islands, to which Mead returned five times after her initial expedition with Reo Fortune in 1928, are thoroughly documented, and there is significant research data for other Indigenous groups of Papua New Guinea, including the Iatmul, Arapesh, Biwat (Mundugumor), Chambri (Tchambuli), Baining, and Sulka peoples. Notes on the latter two are from Gregory Bateson's earliest field trips in the late 1920s. The Balinese and Iatmul material from Mead and Bateson's expedition from 1936 to 1939 indicates their use of the innovative field technique of capturing cultural traits on still and moving picture film.

The Papers of Colleagues series, 1908-1978, includes personal material of Gregory Bateson, Jane Belo, Ruth Benedict, Edith Cobb, Margaret Lowenfeld, and Martha Wolfenstein. Mead acquired these papers primarily through her efforts to promote publication of studies derived from the research of these individuals.

The Photographic File, 1878-1978, contains approximately fifty thousand images, the bulk of which forms part of the South Pacific Ethnographic Archives field data. Photographs exist for nearly every field area and are most numerous for the Manus people of Pere Village. In addition to field photos, there are images of family and friends, a chronological file documenting many of Mead's other activities, and photographs used to illustrate Blackberry Winter , Letters from the Field , and other publications.

Six separate additions plus a Restricted series and an Oversize series are also included in the collection. Additions I and II, both arranged in 1993, document Mead's personal and professional activities and include correspondence, diaries, financial and legal papers, field data, photographs, writings, and miscellaneous items. Addition III, arranged in 2001, contains similar material including significant correspondence files of Ruth Benedict and Rhoda Bubendey Métraux. Addition IV, arranged in 2009, includes additional Benedict correspondence, family papers, and various textual and photographic documentation of Mead's field trip to the Admiralty Islands, 1953-1954, with Lenora Foerstel and Theodore Schwartz. Addition VI, arranged in 2024, includes correspondence to anthropologist Louis Pierre Ledoux from both Emily Fogg Mead and Margaret Mead, as well as field notes and photographs from American Samoa, Bali, and New Guinea. The additions complement the original collection and are arranged in conformity with it. As in the original collection, similar material may be found in more than one series.

Addition I spans the years 1861-1987, with the bulk of the material dating from 1920 to 1978. The addition contains material relating to thirteen of the collection's original sixteen series including Family Papers, Special Correspondence, General Correspondence, Curriculum Vitae, Organizations File, Scheduling File, Publications and Other Writings File, Teaching File, Office File, Miscellany, Institute for Intercultural Studies, Fieldwork, and Photographic File, a portion of which has been relocated to the Restricted series. The Family Papers series of Addition I contains material relating to Mead's mother, Emily Fogg Mead, including correspondence, diaries, financial papers, research notes, speeches, writings, and other items, as well as papers from Mead's childhood and adolescence. The series further includes correspondence between various family members and between Mead and her three husbands, Luther Sheeleigh Cressman, Reo Fortune, and Gregory Bateson.

Addition I: Special Correspondence and Addition I: General Correspondence contain letters exchanged between Mead and various friends and colleagues. A large Photographic File series includes personal and professional photographs of Mead, her family, and her friends, as well as documentary photographs taken during her anthropological field trips.

Addition II spans the period 1875-1979, with the bulk of the items concentrated in the years 1920 to 1978. The addition contains material relating to eleven of the original series including Family Papers, Special Correspondence, General Correspondence, Curriculum Vitae, Publications and Other Writings File, Teaching File, Office File, Miscellany, Fieldwork, Papers of Colleagues, and Photographic File. Highlights include letters exchanged between Mead and her second and third husbands, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson, in the additional Family Papers series. Material documenting Mead's research in the South Pacific in the Fieldwork series consists of correspondence, field notes, reports, and financial records and relates to trips to American Samoa, Bali, and present-day Papua New Guinea.

Addition III spans the years 1912-1996 although, as in the previous additions, most of the items date from 1920 to 1978. The material relates to nine of the collections original series including Family Papers, Special Correspondence, General Correspondence, Projects in Contemporary Culture, Publications and Other Writings, Miscellany, Fieldwork, Papers of Colleagues, and Photographic File. Correspondence between Mead and Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson in the Family Papers reflect their personal satisfactions and disappointments as well as the marital pressures encountered during long periods of separation while engaged in research trips in the field. Further insights into Mead's personal and professional life are included in her correspondence with Ruth Benedict and Rhoda Bubendey Métraux in the Special Correspondence series. Extensive files for both women, noted anthropologists in their own right, reveal the specifics of their personal and romantic relationships with Mead, the level of professional encouragement and assistance each provided the other, and their shared concern for the development and advancement of anthropology as a social science.

Addition IV spans the years 1877-1978 with most of the items dating from 1900 to 1954. The addition contains material relating to seven of the collection's original series including Family Papers, General Correspondence, Publications and Other Writings, Miscellany, Fieldwork, Papers of Colleagues, and Photographic File. Family Papers contain letters and other items of Bateson and Mead family members. Numerous letters exchanged between Gregory Bateson and his mother, Caroline Beatrice Bateson, outline his research trips to Bali and New Guinea, his marriage to Mead, and the birth of their daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, in 1939, providing a portrait of life in the field and at home in England in the years leading up to World War II. Copies of diaries, notebooks, and other data in the Fieldwork series document Mead's expedition to the Admiralty Islands in 1953-1954 with Lenora Foerstel and Theodore Schwartz, and offer variant readings of related items in the original collection. Additions to Ruth Benedict's correspondence in the Papers of Colleagues series include letters exchanged with friend and colleague Edward Sapir and with Mead, whose letters are similar in tone and content to those described in Addition III.

Addition V: Photographic File spans the years 1936-1939. The addition contains 31,604 digital image surrogates of 35mm nitrate negatives, listed chronologically, relating to the collection's original Photographic File (P) series, and documenting Margaret Mead's and Gregory Bateson's field expedition in Bali and among the Iatmul people of New Guinea. An attached spreadsheet provides descriptions of individual images or groups of images compiled from various sources within the collection including, but not limited to, books and publications by Mead, Bateson, and others; Mead's and Bateson's Leica catalogs; their Cine catalog; a numbered card index; typed indexes to their field notes, etc., most of which can be found in the original Fieldwork (N) series and the original Photographic File (P) series.

Addition VI spans the years 1925-1939 and is arranged as a subject file, with headings therein corresponding to the arrangement of previous series. It contains three letters from Emily Fogg Mead to Louis Pierre Ledoux, an anthropologist and student of Mead, attaching several of Mead's bulletins from her New Guinea field expeditions. It also includes additional letters from Mead, including to Ledoux, photographs taken during Mead and Gregory Bateson's trips to Bali and New Guinea in the 1930s, field notes from American Samoa, and a guide to fieldwork in New Guinea compiled by Mead.