22. British Aborigines

Abstract

Saull’s switch from geology to primeval archaeology was not so strange. The upper geological strata and lowest archaeological layers were thought to share a porous border in the 1840s. Nor was the move any less central to his Owenite goal of proving nature’s perfectibility. He saw himself dealing with what he called British “aborigines”, and their rise from “savagery” towards modern mercantile man through changing cultural conditioning. In practice he developed a system, almost unique at this time, of Celtic cultural stages in pre-Roman Britain. Here we deal with his path to this singular position, from his study of ancient hut remains to reclamation and salvage archaeology, as London’s new sewerage works threw up Roman artefacts (which only his and Charles Roach Smith’s museums were prepared to receive). This led to his book Notitia Britanniae (1845), and a lower museum gallery filling up with archaeological remains. Lecturing now often took place at another radical hotbed, the Finsbury Social Institution. Here the old Spencean revolutionary Allen Davenport dedicated his poem “Urania” to Saull. It was also a feminist stronghold, and its leading light Mary Jenneson talked of Saull’s favourite (and levelling) topic, the rise of the British “aborigines”. The Owenite understanding of this concept in an imperial age is unpacked, as is Saull’s political agenda in Notitia.