Background
Marshall was born in Morenci, Arizona territory. Her husband was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1889, studied at Tufts University, and co-founded the Raytheon Company in 1922 where he worked until 1950.
Marshall was born in Morenci, Arizona territory. Her husband was born in Medford, Massachusetts in 1889, studied at Tufts University, and co-founded the Raytheon Company in 1922 where he worked until 1950.
Radcliffe College; Harvard University. University of California, Berkeley.
Marshall received a Bachelor in English Literature from University of California Berkeley in 1921 and an Master of Arts from Radcliffe College in 1928, and before 1926 worked as an English instructor at Mount Holyoke. Later she took anthropology courses at Harvard University and had a second career as an ethnographer. In 1951, the Marshall family went to South-West Africa (now Namibia) to conduct an ethnographic study of the !Kung of Nyae Nyae (also known as the Ju/"hoansi or Ju/"hoan Bushmen).
The family became deeply engaged in this work and returned to Africa on several expeditions throughout the 1950s and 1960s, each lasting from a few months to a year and a half.
As Elizabeth Marshall Thomas explains in her book, The Old Way, Laurence Marshall attempted to recruit an anthropologist to join their expeditions, but no one was interested. lieutenant then fell to Lorna Marshall to conduct ethnographic interviews and compile fieldnotes, despite the fact that she had no formal anthropological training.
During the 1960s and 1970s, Marshall published numerous articles on !Kung culture and religion. Her first book, Kung of Nyae Nyae, was published in 1976 to positive reviews including one by Alan Barnard, who called Marshall "one of the most sensitive, meticulous and unpretentious ethnographers of all time." Marshall enjoyed a long career, publishing her second book, Kung Beliefs and Rites, in 1999 when she was 101.