Because of the history of amalgamation and transfer, the material currently housed in the Duckworth Laboratory does not include all specimens listed and referred to in notebooks and catalogues made a hundred years ago. In order to minimise the effects of this, a computerised catalogue has been built from the actual holdings of the collection.. The lists and descriptions provided below are general ones, organised by geographical area, without identification of the particular collections to which the material originally belonged. Their aim is to provide a notion of the scope, range and scale of the Duckworth Collection as an international resource for the study of human and non-human primate variation and evolution.

The Duckworth Collection is estimated to consist of approximately 17,000 specimens (a specimen may be a skull, a skeletal element or a complete skeleton):

Summary table of Duckworth Holdings

Europe

There are 180 series of European material, mostly made-up of rather small samples. The specimens come from most European countries, of which Austria is the best represented. The geographical range is from Scandinavia (Denmark, Finland), Central and Eastern Europe (Czechoslovakia, Germany, and Switzerland), Western Europe (Holland and France), the Mediterranean (Greece, Italy and island populations), and Britain.

The British remains consist of approximately 5,150 skeletons, crania or partial skeletons from 550 localities in the British Isles. This material is primarily archaeological in origin, and covers the time range from the Neolithic to the medieval period. Geographically there is a bias towards the East Anglian region and southern Britain. The most significant collections include those from Faringdon Street, Spitalfields, and Whitechapel from London (approximately 17th century); Worthy Park (Hampshire), Maiden Castle (Dorset) and Comet Place (Cambridge). The collections include an important sample of British Neolithic remains from long barrows, including West Kennett.

Africa

The bulk of the African material consists of ancient Egyptian skeletons (approximately 8,260 specimens). The large Egyptian series include:

Other large African series include material from Kenya (185, most of them Teita), Tanzania (576, most of them Haya), as well as skeletal remains from Somalia (318) and from Sudan (Jebel Moya, approximately 130). Smaller samples originate from Tanzania (Ngorongoro), South Africa (both Khoisan and Zulu), the Turkana from Kenya, Uganda, Burundi, Zimbabwe, Madagascar, Congo, Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal, Libya and Canary Islands. There is also a small sample of African individuals from Suriname and Jamaica.

The Americas

There are 183 specimens from North America, 94 from Central America, and 139 from South America. For the most part, these are small series or isolated specimens. The two significant series are part of the remains excavated at Kechipawan Pueblo, New Mexico (60 specimens), Jamaica (84) and a series of 92 crania from Pasamayo, Peru. The remaining material comes from several localities in North, Central and South America.

Middle East

The material from the Middle East includes both archaeologically and ethnographically collected remains. The most prominent of the archaeological collections is that from Jericho, with about 800 specimens, but which are very fragmentary and in a poor state of preservation. There is also material from Jordan and Israel (300).

Asia

Important Asian series include material from Burma (Union of Myanmar) (144 specimens), Borneo (118 specimens), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (106), and India (69 specimens). The remainder of the material, consisting of small samples comes from Southern Asia (Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka), Southeast Asia (Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia), Northern Asia (Russia), and Eastern Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan).

Oceania

There are approximately 630 specimens from Oceania. The bulk of these comes from New Guinea (285 specimens), Australia (68 specimens), Torres Straits (73) and New Britain (73 specimens). The remaining specimens come from about other localities throughout Melanesia (New Ireland, Solomon Is., Vanuatu, and New Caledonia) and Polynesia (New Zealand, Easter Is., Fiji, Marquesas Is., Society Is.,Hawaii, and Rotuma). Micronesia is represented by only one specimen from Kiribati.