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The Past in the Present: What Is Civilization? History of Anthropology Newsletter Volume 25 Issue 2 December 1998 Article 4 January 1998 The Past in the Present: What Is Civilization? Michael A. Morse Arthur Mitchell Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/han Part of the Anthropology Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Morse, Michael A. and Mitchell, Arthur (1998) "The Past in the Present: What Is Civilization?," History of Anthropology Newsletter: Vol. 25 : Iss. 2 , Article 4. Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol25/iss2/4 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/han/vol25/iss2/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. HAN ON THE WEB UPDATE: Unfortunately, the website announced in our last number is not yet up and running, and the address given then is no longer current. But work continues, and we hope useful material will soon be accessible at http://anthro.spc.uchicago.edu/-gwsjr/hanl CLIO'S FANCY: DOCUMENTS TO PIQUE THE HISTORICAL IMAGINATION The Past in the Present: What is Civilization? Michael A. Morse University of Chicago Alexander Henry Rhind, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, died in 1863, leaving his entire estate, valued at £7,000, to the creation of a lectureship to be administered by the Society. Rhind had been a leading figure in the movement to reform Treasure Trove laws in order to promote government protection of antiquities. Having embraced the "three-age system" advanced by Scandinavian antiquaries and ethnologists, Rhind hoped that legal protection of antiquities would aid in the building of national collections in Edinburgh, Dublin, and London, allowing British and Irish archaeologists to flesh out the three ages of their domestic prehistory. Though he died at the age of 30, Rhind did much to reach these goals in his short life, but more significantly, in the legacy of his bequest. Under the terms of his will, each holder of the lectureship "shall be bound to deliver annually a course of not less than six lectures on some branch of archaeology, ethnology, ethnography, or allied topic" Soc. Antig. Scot. 14 Dec. 1874). Among the most notable of the early holders of the lectureship (which continues to this day) were J. Romilly Allen, Robert Munro, John Rhys, John Beddoe, Arthur Evans, and later, V. Gordon Childe. The very first holder of the lectureship is not, however, so well known. After John Stuart declined the post, the Society offered it to Sir Arthur Mitchell, then Secretary of the Society, as well as Commissioner in Lunacy for Scotland and Professor of Ancient History to the Royal Scottish Academy. Mitchell delivered ten Rhind Lectures in all, six in 1876 under the title of "The Past in the Present," and four in 1878 under the title of'What is Civilization?" While later lectures in the series looked primarily at the objects and monuments of antiquity, Mitchell's approached the topic through an ethnographic narrative. While travelling through Scotland Mitchell had observed present day uses of objects that could also be found in the archaeological record, and the lectures of the first series were dedicated to particular objects or object categories: the spindle and whorl, food-manufacturing items, houses, farm tools, stone implements, and associated superstitions. In part, Rhind was looking for insight into how these objects and traditions might have been used in antiquity. But he was also interested in how the knowledge behind the objects seemed to go through a process of degeneration, until the objects would take on a totally new meaning. Thus whorls were still in use in yarn manufacture in remote areas, but closer to roads and urban centers were instead venerated as charms. In contrast to better-remembered figures ofhis day, Mitchell arrived at conclusions that challenged prevailing notions of progress. He delivered his lectures within two years of Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt- Rivers' two seminal papers, "Principles of Classification," and "On the Evolution of Culture," which laid the foundation for Pitt-Rivers' evolutionist approach to material culture (Pitt-Rivers 1875a; 1875b). Mitchell's theory that forms of technology often degrade before they become obsolete not only challenged 3 Pitt-Rivers' belief in gradual evolutionary progress, but sounded a note of caution often still not heeded by archaeologists who assign an age to objects on the basis of typological expectations. Finally, while Mitchell used evolutionary phrases such as "level of civilization," and did not use the term "culture" in a relativist sense, his overall message implied a certain relativism. At the very end of the second set of lectures, which were of a more abstract nature, in contrast to the series of case-studies of the first, he argued that "different patterns" are "not necessarily synonymous with different stages of progress" (Mitchell 1881: 246-7). Discussing the very nature of civilization, he defined it as "a complicated outcome of a war waged with Nature by man in Society to prevent her from putting into execution in his case her law of Natural Selection." His relativist interpretation of this definition follows from measuring the success of a civilization, not by its technological achievements, but by its success in this war with natural selection, in other words, in its ability to survive (Mitchell 1881: 188-9). Instead of attributing differences to race, Mitchell proposed a form of geographical determinism, tempered by a belief that the ideologies, or religions, of different societies make for a powerful "modifying influence" (Mitchell 1881: 248). Mitchell's incipient relativism, however, was tempered by his view that civilizations with the Christian religion were best suited to survive and grow, because of the Christian concept of an all-embracing, universal God. [From The Past in the Present: Lecture 1 (18 April, 1876) "The Spindle and the Whorl" (Mitchell1881: 19-42) In the summer of 1864 I had occasion to visit Fetlar, one of the Shetland group of islands. As I walked from the landing-place to the nearest township I overtook a little boy, and, while I was asking him some questions about the people and places, I observed that he was giving shape with his pocket-knife to a piece of stone. At first I thought his occupation was the analogue of the purposeless whittle of the Yankee; but on looking more attentively at the results and progress of his cutting, I saw that he had some definite object in view, and I asked him what he intended to make out of the stone. "A whorl for my mother," was the ready reply. With equal readiness he gave me the half manufactured whorl, which I regarded as an important find. It is made of coarse steatite or soapstone, which is called Kleberstone in Shetland, and which is soft and easily cut. As we walked on, I asked the boy if I should find a finished whorl in his mother's house. He answered me in the affirmative, just as we were close to her door, and I went in and told her what he had said. She immediately produced two spindles, each with a soapstone whorl on it, and I carried them both away .... During that day's sojourn in Fetlar, I had occasion to visit many houses, and in most of them I found the spindle and the whorl in actual use. Perhaps, before I go farther, I should briefly explain what a whorl is, and how it happens to be an object of interest to antiquaries. As it usually presents itself, a whorl is a perforated disk of stone, from an inch to two inches in diameter, and from a quarter to half an inch in thickness. It is placed on the spindle, in order to act by its weight as a fly-wheel- in other words, to make the spindle rotate easily, while still unloaded with yam. 4 Stone is the material of which whorls are commonly made, and their usual form is that of a perforated disk; but they are also made of other materials, such as bone or burnt clay, and they have other forms, such as the sphere or cone. When I say this much in way of description, I have perhaps said enough for my present object. All I desire is, that their general construction and purpose be understood. I am not giving an account of whorls. I propose merely to tell some things about them which appear to me to teach lessons of caution to the student of antiquities. I have still, however, to explain the interest which is taken by antiquaries in these objects. That such an interest exists is sufficiently shown by the fact that whorls appear in almost every museum of old things, whether in Europe or out of it and they generally appear in considerable numbers. Nor is this otherwise than it should be, since whorls are found associated with the builders and occupants of our brochs and eirde-houses; in Anglo-Saxon and Carlovingian graves; among the relics of the Swiss lake- dwellers; in the debris of that city which, according to Schliemann, had perished and was forgotten before the Troy of Homer had its foundations laid; among the vestiges of the Egyptians of the Pyramid times and the mound-builders of North America; associated, in short, with the "man without a story," not in special localities, but almost everywhere. An object of this kind has a proper place in collections of antiquities, since it may be almost, if not quite as old as anything there. It is at least as old as the art of spinning, which is the oldest industrial art of which we have knowledge, and which, moreover, is an art practiced at this present day by some of the least cultured people on the earth.
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