Berthold Laufer

Berthold Laufer was a German-born American anthropologist and museum curator whose scholarship concentrated on the languages, material culture, and historical exchanges of Asia. Tobacco and its use in Asia 1924 corresponds to his Field Museum Anthropology Leaflet No. 18, published in Chicago in 1924 under the title Tobacco and its Use in Asia. The study traces the plant, smoking practices, pipes, and related objects through documentary and museum evidence, with particular attention to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Field Museum published the leaflet as part of its anthropology series, and it stands within Laufer's extensive bibliography. Laufer served as curator of anthropology at the museum and produced research on Chinese art, technology, folklore, and collecting as well as wider Asian topics. His work also considered jade, ivory, paper, printing, and the movement of ideas. This compact tobacco study reflects his characteristic effort to connect an everyday object with migration, trade, language, and the physical evidence preserved in museum collections.