Overview
About Anthropological Museum
This is the most important museum in the islands and the least visited, which tells you something about how tour itineraries are built. It covers the six indigenous peoples of the archipelago across a compact set of galleries: tools, canoes, ornaments, shelter models, hunting and fishing equipment, and a large photographic record from the surveys of the last century.
The material on the Great Andamanese and the Onge is sobering — populations that numbered in the thousands at the time of British settlement and now number in the dozens. The galleries do not soften it. There is also careful, non-sensational coverage of the Jarawa and the Sentinelese, the two groups that remain substantially outside contact, and of why the law protects them the way it does.
That context matters practically as well as morally. If your itinerary includes the Andaman Trunk Road to Baratang, you will pass through the Jarawa Tribal Reserve, where photography, stopping and any interaction are criminal offences. An hour in this museum makes the reason for those rules obvious rather than irritating.
It sits near Middle Point in central Port Blair, is air-conditioned, and takes about an hour.
Why people come here
- Galleries on all six indigenous peoples of the archipelago
- Tools, canoes, ornaments and shelter models
- Historic photographic and survey record
- Clear explanation of the protected-reserve laws
- Central location, easy to pair with the other museums
Things to do
What to do here
The Andamanese galleries
Material culture of the Great Andamanese and Onge, with the demographic history laid out plainly.
Nicobarese and Shompen sections
The Nicobar groups get far less attention on tours than they deserve; the hut models and canoe work are exceptional.
The photographic archive
Survey photography from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, presented without commentary.
Getting there
How to reach
From Aberdeen Bazaar
Five minutes by auto, or a fifteen-minute walk.
On a city tour
Usually bundled with Samudrika and the Fisheries Museum in one afternoon.
Best time to visit · Any month · Tuesday to Sunday
Indoors and cool. Ideal for the hot middle of the day, or a monsoon afternoon when the boats are not sailing.
Good to know
Travel tips
- Go before the Baratang trip, not after. The Trunk Road rules make far more sense with this behind you.
- Closed Mondays.
- Photography is restricted in most galleries — put the phone away and read instead.
- Allow more time than the tour schedule gives you if the subject interests you at all.
Gallery
Anthropological Museum in pictures
Port Blair (South Andaman)
Combine it with
Tour packages
