Powdermaker, Hortense (1896–1970)

US cultural anthropologist. A pioneer among women archaeologists for working alone in exotic places, her Life in Lesu, based on research in a Pacific island village, appeared in 1933. She taught at Queens College, New York, New York, from 1938–68, and did anthropological studies of life in a Mississippi town and in Hollywood, California; the latter resulted in Hollywood, The Dream Factory (1950).

Powdermaker was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The daughter of a businessman, she graduated from Goucher College in 1919, worked as a union organizer, and studied at the London School of Economics. She published her memoirs, Stranger and Friend: The Way of an Anthropologist, in 1966.