phrenology in Britain was varied: accepted by many, but opposed by the
established academia, later on in the century it was generally dismissed as
quackery and charlatanry (van Wyhe 2004). In 1828 George Combe published
The constitution of man considered in relation to external objects, a book that,
despite the adverse reaction by evangelical Christians who considered it
subversive of the Christian faith, years later would even outsell Darwin’s
Origins(van Wyhe 2004: ch. 5). In the 1820s phrenological societies were
established in London, Edinburgh, and WakeWeld, followed in the 1830s by
those of Manchester, Paris, Boston, Aberdeen and others (Drouin-Hans 2001:
30–1; van Wyhe 2004). In Britain, the exclusion of phrenology from the
British Association for the Advancement of Science produced as a reaction
the creation of the (British) Phrenological Association, whichWrst met in
Newcastle in 1839. In Scotland phrenology was followed by the Edinburgh
publisher and antiquarian Robert Chambers (1802–71). Chambers published
anonymouslyVestiges of the natural history of creationin 1844, in which a
universal theory of progressive development to explain changes in nature
throughout time was proposed (van Wyhe 2004: 177).
Chambers would be one of the main inXuences on Daniel Wilson, the
Scottish archaeologist who moved to Canada in 1853 (Chapter 10), and who
invited the Danish Worsaae to visit Edinburgh in 1846 (Kehoe 1998: 14–17).
Wilson would describe aWeldtrip with Chambers in 1851:
On a bright day in the early summer of [1851]...Isetout, in company with my old
friend Dr. Robert Chambers, on an exploratory expedition [to a] rude stone cist...
I had been busy with the supposed evidences of pre-Celtic races, as shown in certain
strange types of head found in bog and barrow; and had experienced the utmost
diYculty in obtaining the needful materials for any adequate test of the theory, set
forth before the end of that year in one of the sections of the British Association as an
‘Inquiry into the evidence of the existence of Primitive Races in Scotland prior to the
Celtae.’... Primitive British crania were in special request, and here was a disclosure
which revealed undreamt-of aYnities between those of the Old and the New World.
[Here he describes what sounds like a Beaker grave.]... We started homeward with
our new-found treasures [skull and pot].
No pleasanter companion could have been selected... than Robert Chambers...we
had a theme now in view which excited his keenest interest... Only the year before
there had been added to the English vocabulary the convenient term prehistoric...
The... skull... disclosed a special feature which had not attracted my attention
before. The occiput wasXattened, precisely as in some of the skullsWgured in
Morton’sCrania Americana. What if it were traceable to the same cause? Here was a
theme pregnant with all the charms of a novel discovery; and our evening’s talk led us
through many a curious speculation on ethnical aYnities, evolutionary development,
perpetuated peculiarities, backward to the very origin of man.
(Wilson 1878: 140–7, in Kehoe 1998: 17–18).346 National Archaeology in Europe