The First Stone and the Last Tasmanian

The Colonial Correspondence of Edward Burnett Tylor and Henry Ling Roth

Dados Bibliográficos

ID7936366
AutoresRebe Taylor (0000-0003-3401-9001, The University of Melbourne, autor correspondente)
Ano2016
Volume86
Fascículo3
Páginas320-343
Data de publicação2016-11-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoOceania (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0029-8077 • E-ISSN: 1834-4461
EditoraWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1002/ocea.5145
OpenAlexW2542002942
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7
Referências citadas34

Between 1890 and 1905, Edward Burnett Tylor and Henry Ling Roth extended and formalised two ideas that were intricately connected and deeply influential to the development of nineteenth century anthropology: that the Tasmanian Aboriginal people represented the earliest phase of cultural evolution and that they were extinct. This paper offers a detailed archival exploration of the correspondence between 1891–1905 that informed those ideas. It finds that Tylor and Roth not only received abstracted facts and artefacts from their colonial contacts; they were directed and inspired by an emergent Australian scholarship that sought to propose and urge new disciplinary directions. This paper reveals not only the importance of Tasmanian Aboriginal people to the history of science, but the role that scientific ideas have shaped Australian social memory and national identity

Aesthetics · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Colonialism · Discipline · Genealogy · Identity (music · Political science · Scholarship · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Australian Indigenous Culture and History · History · History of Science and Natural History · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies