Raymond Dart and the danger of mentors
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3780588 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Derricourt (UNSW Sydney, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2010 |
| Volume | 84 |
| Issue | 323 |
| Pages | 230-235 |
| Publication date | 2010-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Antiquity (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-598X • E-ISSN: 1745-1744 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003598x00099890 |
| OpenAlex | W2121222158 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 3 |
| References cited | 10 |
Archaeology, like all scientific and scholarly disciplines, requires the transmission of knowledge and ideas. This commonly involves the influence of mentors and role models: figures who can at times take on the role of gurus. But adherence to mentors has its dangers. That is shown in the career of Raymond Dart, whose professional work was deeply flawed by the adherence he paid to his mentor Grafton Elliot Smith. His status has been maintained by his dedicated disciple, the great physical anthropologist Phillip Tobias, but critical assessment of the corpus of Dart's work (Dubow 1996; Derricourt 2009) contrasts with his selective reputation.In the first part of 1925, Dart - then a youthful professor of anatomy in Johannesburg - published in quick succession two papers in the pre-eminent British science journal Nature.One (on the discovery of Australopithecus with the announcement and interpretation of the Taung fossil cranium) would become a landmark document in the history of palaeoanthropology and prehistory (Dart 1925a). The other is a classic example of the approaches which would later be seen as belonging in the lunatic fringe of archaeology. Dart would continue publishing on both themes throughout his long and productive life (from his birth in Australia in 1893 to death in Johannesburg in 1988
Archaeology · Art history · Interpretation (philosophy · Prehistory · Reputation · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · Classics · History · Philosophy · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology
Adventures with the missing link
The Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa
Australopithecus africanus The Man-Ape of South Africa
Sir Grafton Elliot Smith. A Biographical Record by His Colleagues
The South African Negro
Associations with and Impressions of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith
The Sizwe will not go away
Human origins, race typology and the other Raymond Dart
| Citations per year | 0.19 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2010 - 2014 (5) |
| Highly cited | No |