Royal Anthropological Institute Research Articles

THE DESERT FAYUM. By G. Caton-Thompson, Research Fellow and Associate Newnham Coll., Cambridge, and E. W. Gardner, Research Fellow Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Associate Newnham Coll., Cambridge. Published and sold by The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 52 Upper Bedford Place, W. C. I, 1934. Vol. I, pp. XIV, 167; Vol. 2, pp. VIII, 107 plates and

THE DESERT FAYUM. By G. Caton-Thompson, Research Fellow and Associate Newnham Coll., Cambridge, and E. W. Gardner, Research Fellow Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, Associate Newnham Coll., Cambridge. Published and sold by The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 52 Upper Bedford Place, W. C. I, 1934. Vol. I, pp. XIV, 167; Vol. 2, pp. VIII, 107 plates and 7 maps. 30s. - Volume 9 Issue 34

Racial Studies in Britain

THE proposals put forward by the Royal Anthropological Institute for an organised anthropometric survey of Great Britain (see NATUKE, 135, 463; 1935) revives a project in anthropological research of which too little has been heard in recent years.

Rivers Medal, 1934, and North African Studies

THE selection of Miss Gertrude Caton-Thompson for the award of the Rivers Memorial Medal for 1934 by the Council of the Royal Anthropological Institute will be cordially endorsed by all who follow the progress of archaeological studies with any degree of close interest. The medal is awarded annually, and was founded to perpetuate the memory of the late Dr. W. H. R. Rivers by recognising work of outstanding merit in any branch of anthropological studies. Miss Caton-Thompson's work as an excavator of archaeological sites has covered a varied field in time and space. It has ranged from the earliest prehistoric period to the fringe of historic times in Egypt, the Libyan Desert and southern Africa. Her investigation of the Zimbabwe culture of Southern Rhodesia has not only pricked the bubble of speculation, but it has also based the solution of an obscure problem of African ethnology on an assured body of archaeological fact. No one will question that Miss Caton-Thompson's work is “characterised by wide knowledge, sound judgment and insight”, to quote the words of Dr. H. S. Harrison in making the presentation of the medal at the meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute on April 9, at which Miss Caton-Thompson delivered a lecture on the results of the Institute's archæological expedition to the oasis of El Kharga, of which she has been in charge. The importance of these investigations may be gauged from her examination of their bearing on some Stone Age problems of North Africa, problems which recent studies, especially by French archaeologists, show to be assuming an increasing importance in the reconsideration of the prehistory of North Africa and its relation to the origin and development of the later palæolithic and mesolithic cultures of Europe. (See NATURE, 133, 107; 1934. 134, 975; 1934. 135, 550; 1935. An account of the investigation of the rock-shelter of Afalou in Algeria will appear shortly.)

The Peoples of Britain

AT the present time, when racial questions are very much in the air, the proposal of the Royal Anthropological Institute for promoting a survey of the racial characters of the inhabitants of Great Britain is more than opportune. It meets an urgent need in scientific investigation; and, incidentally, it will fill a serious gap in the common fund of established fact which makes up the background of public opinion. Public policy recently has become involved in the discussion of a number of intricate and technical problems, with the result that clear thinking and clear definition were never a more urgent necessity than they are to-day. It is here that the assistance of the anthropologist is invoked. The importation of the racial question into international and national relations has opened a way to biased interpretation and racial prejudice which a statement of the facts and their direct implications alone can dispel.

The Pre-Crag People of Suffolk

ON February 19, Mr. Reid Moir spoke at the Royal Anthropological Institute on “The Age of the Sub-Crag Flint Implements”. It is now twenty-five years since the first traces of man were found in the Suffolk Bone Bed beneath the Red Crag. The Bone Bed is of very considerable geological -antiquity, and predates those deposits containing the earliest palaeolithic implements.

Kalevala Centenary

ON February 28, the Finnish people celebrated the centenary of the completion by Elias Lonnrott of the first edition of the Kalevala, the Finnish national folk-epic. The celebrations culminated in a great gathering in the recently completed Fair Hall at Helsingfors, at which a large number of scholars and delegates from foreign countries were present. Great Britain was represented by Mr. Robert Nichols, Dr. Margaret Murray (Royal Anthropological Institute) and Miss Agnes Dawson (Folk-Lore Society). It was at one time the fashion to compare the Kalevala with the Homeric poems; but in fact this great collection of the legends and folk-lore of Finland is unique in European literature, both as a picture on an enormous canvas of a very primitive stage of society and as a mosaic of pagan magic, pagan religious belief and heroic legend. In this respect it surpasses anything that can be found in the pagan element of Germanic or Scandinavian saga. It consists of a large number of ballads which Lonnrott collected among the peasantry of Karelia, the eastern province of Finland, and wove into a composite whole. It has played an important part in fostering Finnish national aspirations, and has been a fertile source of inspiration in literature, art and music. Since Lonnrott's day much further material of a similar character has been collected. The esteem in which this body of literature is held as a national possession was marked in the present celebrations by a special session of the Diet at which a sum of approximately £9,000 was voted for the further study of the ancient history, culture and literature of the Finnish people, and by the presence of more than 4,000 people when M. Mamtere, Minister of Education, opened an exhibition, at which a large collection of pictures by Gallen Kalicia, Finland's greatest painter of Kalevala subjects, was the centre of attraction.

Racial History of Britain

A LETTER to The Times of March 13 puts forward on behalf of the Royal Anthropological Institute proposals for a comprehensive survey of the racial history and physical constitution of the inhabitants of Britain-a matter in which action is long overdue. It is a remarkable fact, and one which was not generally appreciated until necessity arose during the War, that so little should be known of the physical characters of the British population as a whole. The racial character of the British peoples in prehistoric and early historic times, as preserved in skeletal remains in museums, has received attention from time to time, but piecemeal; and more or less extended investigations of the present population have been carried out in parts of Scotland, Wales, England and Ireland; but no organised attempt has been made to correlate this material or to extend it systematically. The proposals now put forward provide for both the examination of the skeletal material preserved in museums and anatomical collections and the measurement by trained observers of groups of the existing population all over the country. Arrangements will also be made for the reduction and digestion of the material when collected, and for its publication.

Books on Anthropology and Archiæology

CATALOGUE No. 574 (Anthropology and Folklore-Archaeology and Ethnography) issued by Messrs. Francis Edwards, Ltd., 83 High Street, Marylebone, London, W.I, including both new and second-hand books, though, naturally, the latter predominate, contains just under a thousand items. On looking through the list, two points occur, one being the high average in the quality of the books from the point of view of the anthropologist, and secondly the fact that, with certain exceptions, the prices do not rule high. With regard to the first point, the subjects covered by the catalogue, it is almost needless to say, have been a happy hunting ground for the wilder theorist and speculation has been rife in their literature. It is evident that here on the whole a wide discretion has been exercised in selection. The question of price is no less interesting. It is not intended to convey that this catalogue is an exceptional opportunity for bargain hunters-although it would be possible to form from its pages an excellent nucleus of a reference library in anthropology at a very moderate price—but rather that the rarities, and even some of the older standard books which command a high price, are becoming increasingly rare. Among the items to be noted are some complete runs of scientific publications, such as the Folklore Society's publications and those of the Royal Anthropological Institute, some lengthy runs of Archceologia and a virtually complete set of the Journal of the African Society, of which certain numbers are now impossible to obtain, except by fortunate accident. A noteworthy item is Edge-Partington's ethnographic album of the Pacific, of which, it is thought, not more than half a dozen copies are now in existence in private hands.

International Anthropology and Ethnology

THE first session of the International. Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences was opened by H.R.H. Prince George at University College, London, on July 30. The Congress is the outcome of a movement initiated more than twenty years ago, when in 1912, after the London Meeting of the International Congress of Americanists, a small international committee was appointed by the Royal Anthropological Institute to organise such a Congress. As a result of no little negotiation and correspondence, it was then arranged that a Congress should take place in 1916. Owing to the War, the Congress did not meet, and the proposal fell into abeyance, until in the course of the discussion of arrangements for the International Congress of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, which met in London in 1932, it emerged that the need for an international meeting ground for the discussion of the problems of ethnology was urgently felt. Experience gained by the inclusion of an ethnological section at the archaeological congresses organised after the War by the French Institut d'Anthropologie had proved to the satisfaction of most of those who had taken part that nothing short of an independent congress would prove satisfactory. Many, with good reason, were reluctant to add to the already large number of international scientific congresses; but the almost overwhelmingly heavy programme submitted at this first session is a sufficient proof of the wisdom of the decision. Not merely the number and the variety of the communications, but also the number of joint discussions between two or more sections thirteen discussions in all shows that, even within the limits laid down by those responsible for the organisation of the programme, the debatable questions in ethnology, which it is felt desirable to ventilate by open discussion, are numerous.

Finds in the Kharga Oasis

AT the British Museum, exhibits from the Libyan Desert have been arranged at the head of the main staircase, primarily for the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences which is being held on July 30-Aug. 4, but the exhibition will remain open until the autumn. Under the auspices of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the expedition was conducted by Miss Caton-Thompson, the geological work being undertaken by Miss E. W. Gardner. The oasis is an area below the general level of the desert about 120 miles west of Thebes and 400 miles from the Mediterranean; and the most prolific sites on the floor of the Depression were fossil springs, which forced up sands and clays and formed mounds with the help of vegetation, such as palms and reeds. The mounds contain St. Acheul types of flint implements, with Aterian (Upper Palaeolithic) after an interval. There is a general likeness to specimens from Palestine, and typical Levallois artifacts include several plunging flakes. The remarkable gloss, like porcelain, on many hand-axes is here accounted for by the friction of sand-charged water. On the scarp of the Depression Tufa deposits have yielded a number of flint implements ranging from St. Acheul to a phase preceding the Sebilian of the Nile Valley. The deposits include three species of fig, with land and freshwater shells all of living species. The rainfall can be studied from the combined evidence; and the exhibits include specimens of raw material roughly shaped, a fine series of arrow-heads from the surface, and contemporary beads of ostrich egg-shell. Finally, there is an object-lesson in patination, flints of a single culture showing at least three kinds of surface alteration.

Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences

A PRELIMINARY programme of the first session of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences to meet in London under the presidency of the Earl of Onslow from July 30 until August 4 next is now available. The headquarters will be at University College, Gower Street, W.C.2. The inaugural meeting will take place in the Great Hall of the College on July 30 at 3 p.m., when H.R.H. the Duke of York will receive the delegates and declare the Congress open, and Lord Onslow will deliver his presidential address. On the same day at 10 p.m. H.M. Government will hold a reception of the members of the Congress at Lancaster House, St. James's, S.W. The business of the Congress will be conducted in general and sectional meetings. At the first of the general meetings, which will be held on July 31 at 8.30 p.m., Sir Aurel Stein will deliver the Huxley Memorial Lecture of the Royal Anthropological Institute and will receive the Institute's Huxley Memorial Medal for 1934. At subsequent general meetings in the evenings of the following days, the Congress will be addressed by Dr. R. R. Marett, Prof. T. C. Hodson, and Prof. J. B. S. Haldane, each of whom will deal with some one aspect of present tendencies in anthropological studies. Communications addressed to the Congress by its members will be submitted to meetings of the sections, of which there will be eight, each one dealing with a major division of the studies with which the Congress is concerned.

International Congress of Anthropology and Ethnology

ARRANGEMENTS are now well advanced for the first session of the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, which will be held under royal patronage in London on July 30 August 4 next. The proposal to hold a congress of this nature was first made in 1912, when the International Congress of Americanists met in London,but the meeting in 1916, for which arrangements were then made, had to be postponed indefinitely owing to the War. In future the Congress will be held every fourth year, alternating with the International Congress of Archæological and Pro to-historic Sciences, which will be held in the second of the intervening years. The Anthropological Congress will coincide with the meeting in Europe of the International Congress of Americanists, which this year is to be held at Seville. The sessions of the Congress will be held at University College, Gower Street, and at the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum. The president is Lord Onslow and the chairman of the executive committee, Capt. T. A. Joyce. Prof. J. L. Myres and Mr. A. H. Brodrick are the joint honorary secretaries and Mr. H. G. Beasley the treasurer. Presidents of sections are Prof. G. Elliot Smith (Anatomy and Physical Anthropology), Mr. F. C. Bartlett (Psychology), Prof. C. B. Fawcett (Demography), Dr. A. C. Haddon (Ethnography), the Rev. E. Smith, president of the Royal Anthropological Institute (Subsection of African Ethnography), Mr. H. Balfour (Technology), Prof. C. G. Seligman (Sociology), Prof. E. O. James (Religions) and Dr. Alan H. Gardiner (Languages and Writing). Among the vice-presidents are the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Lord Mayor of London, the High Commissioners of India and South Africa, Sir James Frazer, and the presidents of the Societies of Antiquaries, the Folklore Society and the Royal Asiatic Society. Particulars of the Congress may be obtained from the Royal Anthropological Institute, 52 Upper Bedford Place, W.C.I.

Exploration of Kharga Oasis, 1932–33

A SUMMARY report of the expedition of the Royal Anthropological Institute to Kharga in 1932-33 appears in Man of November. This report covers the third and final season's work of the expedition as originally planned. Miss Caton-Thompson did not accompany the expedition on this occasion and Miss Gardner's attention was devoted mainly to the further geological exploration of the oasis and also to clearing up certain points from previous year's work. More than two hundred miles were carefully surveyed and in addition comparative studies were made in the Nile Valley from three bases. One of the most important of the results in relation to the main object of the expedition was the dating of the top tufa terrace at Refuf both by advanced Acheulean hand-axes in a scree deposit beneath the tufa and by core and flake tools without hand-axes inter-bedded in the tufa itself. This is the first time that implements have been found in such a situation. A number of shells new to Kharga were collected. An unmapped pass was discovered in lat. 25-5°. In a note commenting on the work of the expedition and the results, Miss Caton-Thompson directs attention once more to the difficulties attendant on archaeological work in Egypt owing to the unsatisfactory state of the antiquities laws. In this instance, the difficulty arises from the fact that the Egyptian Department of Antiquities has enforced on an expedition for geological and prehistoric research conditions which were framed to meet the requirements of dynastic and predynastic excavation. The Kharga expedition has provided unprecedented material for the typological study of early palaeolithic industries, but as Miss Caton-Thompson points out, their scientific value is entirely destroyed if picked specimens from a series forming a related whole are selected for retention in Egypt. She urges the immediate introduction of fresh regulations permitting the temporary export for purposes of study of such series, unmutilated by capricious selection.

Centralisation of Anthropological Studies

THE centralisation of anthropological studies in Great Britain, to which attention is directed in NATURE, July 22, pp. 113–5, is no new problem. Beginning with the fusion in 1871 of the old Anthropological and Ethnological Societies to form what is now the Royal Anthropological Institute, there have been several attempts to co-ordinate and improve the provision, both for research and for teaching, in this wide and complicated group of studies. There is a summary of them in the Institute's Journal, vol. 59, 1929, under the title “The Science of Man in the Service of the State”.

Centralisation of Anthropological Studies

ON p. 208 of this issue we publish a communication from Prof. J. L. Myres in reference to the article “Centralisation of Anthropological Studies” appearing in NATURE of July 22, p. 113, in which he directs attention to the efforts made to bring about an improved organisation in the science of anthropology in Great Britain since 1896 and earlier. Such efforts have been noted from time to time and made the subject of comment in NATUBE, nor must it be assumed, if no reference has been made to them on this occasion, that they have been overlooked. Lest any confusion should arise, however, it may be as well to point out that the various movements chronicled by Prof. Myres have by no means had an identical objective. Each has pressed for such measures as the circumstances of the time have seemed to demand. At the turn of the century, both on public and on academic grounds, an Imperial Bureau of Ethnology was deemed the most pressing need: the Joint Committee for Anthropological Research and Teaching, which works in association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, is the form taken by the most recent and successful effort. This latter has provided an effective medium for authoritative pronouncement of anthropological opinion on matters of policy, and for the promotion of concerted action. The ‘Joint Committee’, however, is not an academic body; and the consolidation of anthropological teaching and research within the universities on some such lines as those suggested in NATURE should strengthen the hand of the representatives of the universities on the Committee, rather than conflict with its functions.

Forthcoming Events

Tuesday, July 4 ROYAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL INSTITUTE, at 8.30.—(Special Meeting). Prof. Peter H. Buck: “Polynesian Voyages”.

International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences

ARRANGEMENTS are well forward for giving effect to the decision of the international conference held in Basel recently (see NATURE of May 20, p. 719) that an International Congress of the Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences should be established and that the first meeting should be held in London in 1933. It has now been decided that the session will take place on July 30-August 4, 1933. An executive committee will be responsible for the preparations for the Congress. At a meeting of the Royal Anthropological Institute held on July 4, Capt. T. A. Joyce was elected chairman of the Executive Committee, Mr. H. Beazley, treasurer, and Prof. J. L. Myres and Mr. Alan H. Brodrick, joint honorary secretaries with Mr. Adrian Digby as assistant secretary. Accommodation for the meetings of the Congress offered by University College, London, and the Wellcome Historical Medical Museum, has been accepted provisionally.

International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences

IN accordance with a previous announcement, a conference was held at Basel on April 20–22 with the object of organising an international congress of the anthropological and ethnological sciences. Local arrangements were in the hands of Dr. F. Speiser of Basel and those who attended were received by Dr. F. Hauser, director of education, on behalf of the city of Basel and by Prof. Ernst Staehelin, Rector of the University of Basel, on behalf of the University. Twenty-three delegates, representing nine nationalities, were present and promises of support had been received from a large and representative number of anthropologists. Prof. J. L. Myres (Oxford) was elected president of the conference and Dr. Speiser and Mr. Houghton Brodrick (London), secretaries. Although some of the delegates expressed a strong preference for two separate congresses, to cover the anthropological and ethnological sciences respectively, it was decided that: (1) an international congress of anthropological and ethnological sciences be established; (2) the first congress be held, if possible, in 1934, and thereafter at intervals of four years; (3) on the invitation of the Royal Anthropological Institute, supported by the Joint Committee for Anthropological Research and Teaching, the first congress be held in England, probably in London, in 1934. Draft statutes prepared by the president, the secretaries and Profs. Krause and Mauss, following closely the lines of the statutes of the International Congress for Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, were considered and adopted. After nominations to the comité d'honneur, the permanent council and the offices of national secretaries, and votes of thanks to the City, the University and those who had been responsible for the work of the conference, the conference dissolved. A report of the meeting will be found in Man for May.

Early Man in East Africa

WHILE it is no longer possible on the latest interpretation of the evidence to accept the very high antiquity of Oldoway man, there appears elsewhere in this issue of NATURE (p. 477) a series of reports on the further evidence collected by Dr. Leakey in the spring of last year (not “autumn” as stated inadvertently in our note last week) which points to the early appearance of Homo sapiens in East Africa. We publish in full the reports of four committees, each dealing with one aspect of the evidence, presented to, and adopted by, the Royal Anthropological Institute's conference at Cambridge. The material which the committees had before them was derived from deposits at Kanjera and Kanam, two sites, about three miles apart, near Kendu, at the northeast of Victoria Nyanza, an area of old lake-beds,well-known for its fossiliferous deposits. It comprised a part of a femur and fragments of human skulls of three individuals from Kanjera, of which one group formed a skull-cap, and a second permitted a reconstruction of the skull, and of a small fragment of human mandible from Kanam, fossil animal remains, including a considerable proportion (which has been put so high as fifty per cent) of specimens belonging to extinct forms, and two stone industries, one a pebble industry and the other Chellean. It is to be noted that at Kanjera, while the human bones comprising two groups had been washed out by the rains, two fragments of the third group were found in situ in association with fossil animal remains and Chellean tools. Further, the Kanam fragment of mandible was found not far from a pre-Chellean stone implement.

Obituary

THE death is announced of Mr. Walter E. Roth, which took place on April 5 after an operation at Demerara. Mr. Roth was a brother of the late Mr. H. Ling Roth, curator of the Bankfield Museum, Halifax. For many years before proceeding to British Guiana, Mr. Roth was Protector of Aborigines, Queensland, Australia. He was the author of “Ethnological Studies among the North-West Central Queensland Aborigines” (1897) and of a number of monographs on various aspects of the culture of the Queensland aborigines which appeared as official bulletins. He also wrote a number of papers, mostly technological, on the culture of the Indians of British Guiana which appeared in the Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, the reports of the Bureau of American Ethnology and elsewhere.