application of the theories of evolution to organize his collections of material
culture chronologically, one of the main aims of his work was to teach the
unnaturalness of social revolution and he explicitly held that archaeological
museums should serve to inculcate ‘sounder’ (i.e. conservative) views on
social questions (Bradley 1983: 7). Even in France, Hammond (1980) notes,
as the resistance to evolutionary doctrines ceased, so did the doctrine’s
revolutionary character.
Liberal or conservative, most evolutionists unashamedly believed in the
superiority of the white race and in the superiority of their own nation
(Barkan 1992: 17). From today’s perspective, nineteenth-century racism ap-
pears to be a clear illustration of an extremely conservative political attitude.
At the time, however, it was an issue upon which the great majority of
intellectuals agreed. Exceptions to the rule were few and far between. The
study of anthropology—and of prehistoric archaeology—was atWrst linked,
in the case of some individuals, with anti-authoritarian and anti-clerical
attitudes, but not with a conviction in the equality of the races. As evolution-
ism advocated progress, primitive peoples were considered to belong to the
past, to convention, tradition and irrational belief (Chapter 10). As discussed
in Chapter 12, during theWrst half of the century a series of techniques had
been developed to measure the diVerences between the races, and, whereas
some theories such as phrenology had been rejected by academia, others like
craniology had been widely accepted. DiVerences in the skull form of distinct
human groups had been one of the common arguments used to maintain
polygenism, the theory that sustained that not all human races had the same
origin. In the last four decades of the century craniology continued develop-
ing and reWning its methods. In Germany, for example, in 1883 craniologists
rejected Darwinism and a consensus was reached in the so-called Frankfurt
Agreement. This also resulted in a consensus about the appropriate measure-
ments to be taken so that data produced by diVerent scholars could be
compared. As Zimmerman (2001: 88, ch. 4) explains, this agreement also
had the eVect of creating a collective identity among those doing research in
craniology. The success of craniology would carry on during the last decades
of the century, indeed to continue well into the twentieth century (Poliakov
1996 (1971): 264; Zimmerman 2001: ch. 4). In Britain, craniologists were
represented by men such as George Rolleston (1829–81), Linacre Professor of
Anatomy and Physiology in Oxford from 1860 (Price 2005–6). During this
period, practising barrow-diggers felt that a discussion of the skulls found in
the graves was part and parcel of what a good antiquarian should do (Giles
2006).
In 1869 Sir Francis Galton (1822–1911), aWrst cousin of Charles Darwin
(1809–82), published Hereditary Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and
Evolutionism and Positivism 375