The Great Eolith Debate and the Anthropological Institute

Roy Ellen,Angela Muthana

doi:10.5334/bha-623

Roy Ellen, Angela Muthana

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.5334/bha-623

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Abstract

From the 1880s onwards, the Anthropological Institute played a key role in arguments surrounding eoliths, both as a venue for significant events and through the pages of its journals. Eoliths, stone objects claimed to be man-made and regarded by ‘eolithophiles’ as the precursors of handaxes, had become an issue almost as soon as the first chipped flints had been accepted as artifacts in the mid-nineteenth century. The ensuing debate, that drew in many luminaries of the age – such as Edward Tylor, John Evans, Alfred Russel Wallace and Joseph Prestwich – in many ways exemplified the changing relationship between amateurs and professionals in the affairs of the Institute, and between the different branches of evolutionist anthropology, addressing questions of scientific method, the use of ethnographic analogies, and contributing to the splits between the branches, and the eventual supremacy of the professionals by the eve of the Second World War.

Highlights

From the 1880s onwards, the [Royal] Anthropological Institute played a key role in arguments surrounding eoliths, both as a venue for significant events and through the pages of its journals
In the early phase of the debate we find generalists such as Tylor (1871: 16) freely moving between supposedly ancient European eoliths and eolithic ‘survivals’ in the form of the Tasmanian data
The Tasmanian specimens had been exhibited at the famous 1891 meeting, and Tylor himself had read a paper at the Institute on 21 March 1893 ‘On the Tasmanians as representatives of Palaeolithic man,’ which subsequently appeared in the Journal (Tylor 1894)

Summary

The Great Eolith Debate and the Anthropological Institute

From the 1880s onwards, the Anthropological Institute played a key role in arguments surrounding eoliths, both as a venue for significant events and through the pages of its journals. Stone objects claimed to be man-made and regarded by ‘eolithophiles’ as the precursors of handaxes, had become an issue almost as soon as the first chipped flints had been accepted as artifacts in the mid-nineteenth century. The ensuing debate, that drew in many luminaries of the age – such as Edward Tylor, John Evans, Alfred Russel Wallace and Joseph Prestwich – in many ways exemplified the changing relationship between amateurs and professionals in the affairs of the Institute, and between the different branches of evolutionist anthropology, addressing questions of scientific method, the use of ethnographic analogies, and contributing to the splits between the branches, and the eventual supremacy of the professionals by the eve of the Second World War

Introduction

Conclusion