Consequences. He suggested that the principles of ‘natural selection’ could be
applied to improve the human race. Race, for him, was equated with levels of
intelligence and other mental abilities that could be measured. Galton argued
for the establishment of a hierarchy of racial groups that distinguished
between the ‘superior’ and the ‘inferior’ races on the basis of criteria such as
intelligence, moral character, ambition and creativity. He also maintained
that interbreeding between superior and inferior races led to degeneration. In
order to prove his hypothesis, Galton created an ‘anthropometric laboratory’
at the South Kensington Science Museum in London and hired the then
young Flinders Petrie (1853–1942), who is more known to archaeology as
an Egyptologist and theWrst Edwards Professor of Egyptology in London
(1892–1933) (Chapters 5 and 6). As a result of this collaboration, later in his
life, in 1887, Petrie published a book,Racial Types from Egypt, in which he
applied many of Galton’s ideas (Ramsey 2004; Silberman 1999b: 73). Darwin’s
opinions, however, seem to have diVered from those of his cousin. InThe
Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex(1871), he argued that races
‘graduate into each other, and that it is hardly possible to discover clear
distinctive characters between them’ (in Barkan 1992: 18). Thus, in his
opinion, racial diVerences were not of evolutionary importance. However,
as Barkan points out, Darwin’s views were mostly ignored by his contempor-
aries. Theories on racial inequality became extremely popular and later in the
century would be the basis for a racial doctrine known as ‘eugenics’, which
would be in favour until the Second World War. The followers of eugenics
believed in the racial diVerences of human groups and advocated intervention
to improve races in aspects such as intelligence (Barkan 1992; MacMaster
2001: ch. 1; Massin 2001; Shipman 2004).
As seen in Chapter 12, earlier in the century the interest in racial studies
had had an impact on classical and medieval archaeology. This continued for
several decades as can be illustrated by particular examples from Britain and
France. In Britain, the English solicitor and historian, Henry Charles Coote
(1815–85), criticized in his bookThe Romans in Britain(1878) those who
believed that the Anglo-Saxons had made atabula rasaof Roman Britain. He
argued that the Anglo-Saxons had had neither a racial nor a cultural impact,
given that racially the population had been Teutonic (by which he meant
German and Aryan) since pre-Roman times and that the laws and customs
observed under Anglo-Saxon rule were of Roman origin. The Roman period
had only signiWed the arrival of civilization, not a mixing of races. The Anglo-
Saxon period had, therefore, been a Dark Age, which only ended with the
Normans. His ideas reXected those of many of his contemporaries and were
repeated well into the twentieth century (Hingley 2000: chs. 7–8). In France,
many archaeologists also claimed that, despite the adoption of Roman and
376 National Archaeology in Europe