Bones and Bodies

Alan G Morris

Description

Alan G Morris critically examines the history of evolutionary anthropology in South Africa, uncovering the implicit racial biases of these physical anthropology researchers and the discipline itself.

Bones and Bodies is a highly accessible account of the establishment of the scientific discipline of biological anthropology. Alan G Morris takes us back over the past century of anthropological discovery in South Africa and uncovers the stories of individual scientists and researchers who played a significant role in shaping perceptions of how peoples of southern Africa, both ancient and modern, came to be viewed and categorised both in the public imagination and the scientific literature.

Morris reveals how much of the earlier anthropological studies were tainted with the tarred brush of race science, evaluating the works of famous anthropologists and archaeologists such as Raymond Dart, Thomas Dreyer, Matthew Drennan and Robert Broom.

Morris also considers how modern anthropology tried to rid itself of the stigma of these early racist accounts. In the 1960s and 1970s, Ronald Singer and Phillip Tobias introduced modern methods into the discipline that disputed much of what the public wished to believe about race and human evolution.

Bones and Bodies shows the battle facing modern anthropology to acknowledge its racial past but also how its study of human variation remains an important field of enquiry at institutions of higher learning.

List of Illustrations

A Note on the Use of Historical Terminology

Acknowledgements

List of Characters with Dates of Birth, Death and Affiliation

Schema of Types

Introduction

Chapter 1 Dr Louis Péringuey’s Well-Travelled Skeletons

Chapter 2 Boskop: The First South African Fossil Human Celebrity

Chapter 3 Matthew Drennan and the Scottish Influence in Cape Town

Chapter 4 The Age of Racial Typology in South Africa

Chapter 5 Raymond Dart’s Complicated Legacy

Chapter 6 Ronald Singer, Phillip Tobias and the ‘New Physical Anthropology’

Chapter 7 Physical Anthropology and the Administration of Apartheid

Chapter 8 The Politics of Racial Classification in Modern South Africa

Select Bibliography

Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• HISTORY
• Sociologie, société et politique
• África
• Evolutionary anthropology
• Physical
• Medical anthropology
• General officer
• History of Africa
• Anthropology
• General
• Africa

Informations

• Publié par: WITS University Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776147267
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

Published in South Africa by:
Wits University Press
1 Jan Smuts Avenue
Johannesburg 2001
www.witspress.co.za
Copyright © Alan G. Morris 2022
Published edition © Wits University Press 2022
Images and figures © Copyright holders
First published 2022
http://dx.doi.org.10.18772/12022027236
978-1-77614-723-6 (Paperback)
978-1-77614-724-3 (Hardback)
978-1-77614-725-0 (Web PDF)
978-1-77614-726-7 (EPUB)
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Project manager: Alison Lockhart
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CONTENTS
A NOTE ON THE USE OF HISTORICAL TERMINOLOGY
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
LIST OF CHARACTERS WITH DATES OF BIRTH, DEATH AND AFFILIATION
SCHEMA OF TYPES
INTRODUCTION CHAPTER 1 Dr Louis Péringuey’s Well-Travelled Skeletons CHAPTER 2 Boskop: The First South African Fossil Human Celebrity CHAPTER 3 Matthew Drennan and the Scottish Influence in Cape Town CHAPTER 4 The Age of Racial Typology in South Africa CHAPTER 5 Raymond Dart’s Complicated Legacy CHAPTER 6 Ronald Singer, Phillip Tobias and the ‘New Physical Anthropology’ CHAPTER 7 Physical Anthropology and the Administration of Apartheid CHAPTER 8 The Politics of Racial Classification in Modern South Africa
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX
A NOTE ON THE USE OF HISTORICAL TERMINOLOGY
T he terminology describing South African peoples has changed dramatically over the years. Modern usage has tried, where possible, to choose language that is acceptable to the descendant communities themselves, as many of the earlier terms are now considered insulting at best and virulently racist at worst.
Which modern terminology is most appropriate? This is indeed a difficult question as some names are acceptable in one location or context, but not in another. I have tried to use as a guide the nomenclature of southern African people as proposed at the June 1971 Royal Society of South Africa meeting (Jenkins and Tobias 1977). This meeting suggested that separate terminology be used for discussions of biology, language and culture/economy. Wherever possible, I have tried to use names based on languages spoken by modern or historical populations. Linguistic terms have a major advantage in that they are often ethnically based and self-defined, but they do not always overlap with biological origin. People speaking languages from entirely different families can have strong biological relationships and vice versa. Although the old racial categories of ‘Caucasoid’, ‘Mongoloid’ and ‘Negroid’ are considered to have limited value in categorising biology, I have still used the terms ‘South African Negro’ and ‘Khoesan’, as they gather people into two biological clusters; the former being linguistically related Bantu-speaking populations, while the latter is made up of people speaking languages from at least three completely different families, yet sharing significant biological similarity.
I have not replaced old terms with their modern equivalents where the results of earlier research are presented, as the modern and older terms are not always interchangeable. For example, Khoekhoen today is accepted as an ethnic term referring to people who are culturally defined as speaking a Khoe language (Jones 2003), but a century ago the term ‘Hottentot’ had both biological and political meanings, often referring to people of mixed genetic and cultural heritage. It is thus important that when reporting on the early research we use the terms as those researchers did, only bringing the terminology into modern form when we are summarising the early research in relation to what we know today.
Therefore, much of the early terminology is retained in this book as it was used in the research that is being discussed. Where terms are no longer acceptable, the historical use is marked by the employment of quotation marks, not to emphasise the validity of the terms, but as a convention to show that the terms today are problematic. This includes both ethnic and racial terms.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1.1 Staff of the South African Museum in 1920 Figure 2.1 The cranium of the Boskop specimen Figure 2.2 A photograph of Frederick William FitzSimons Figure 2.3 Frederick FitzSimons excavating at Whitcher’s Cave, near George, circa 1921 Figure 2.4 An unnamed cave in the Tsitsikamma region excavated by Frederick FitzSimons in the 1920s Figure 3.1 Matthew Drennan in his anthropology laboratory at the University of Cape Town in 1931 Figure 3.2 The Cape Flats skull, discovered by Matthew Drennan near Cape Town in 1929 Figure 3.3 Donkey cart access to the Elandsfontein fossil site near Hopefield, circa 1952 Figure 3.4 Tea break during excavations at Elandsfontein in the early 1950s Figure 3.5 The Saldanha skull after reconstruction Figure 3.6 E.N. (Ted) Keen holding stone and bone artefacts at the Elandsfontein fossil site, circa 1953 Figure 3.7 Matthew Drennan at the Elandsfontein fossil site, circa 1953 Figure 4.1 Thomas Frederick Dreyer, 1937 Figure 4.2 Thomas Dreyer’s reconstruction of the Florisbad hominin Figure 4.3 Vernon Brink with other unnamed medical students at Oxford University, circa 1921 Figure 4.4 Illustration from Thomas Dreyer and Albert Meiring’s 1937 article on the Kakamas burials Figure 5.1 Raymond Dart in 1925 with the Taung skull shortly after its discovery Figure 5.2 Lawrence Wells, Alexander Galloway and Trevor Trevor-Jones studying the Bambandyanalo skeletons in 1936 Figure 6.1 Robert Broom at the Sterkfontein fossil site in August 1936 Figure 6.2 The members of the 1951 Panhard-Capricorn Expedition just before their departure for the Kalahari Figure 6.3 Excavating Griqua graves in April 1961 at the old Campbell cemetery in the Northern Cape Figure 6.4 Raymond Dart’s 84th birthday celebration at the Department of Anatomy, University of the Witwatersrand, February 1977
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
B efore anyone else, I need to start by thanking my wife, Liz, for putting up with my bad temper and the single-minded focus that always accompanies my writing. Honey, I am sorry that I did it to you again! Once more, you came to the fore in reading through my scramble of pages and giving me the encouragement to continue – oh, and sometimes warning me that it was not working and that I needed to go back to the keyboard. With this book, I occasionally roped in my daughter Leigh as well. I really appreciate both of you.
Other than my stalwart wife and daughter, there has been a whole range of people who have given me their time to answer questions, provide guidance or give me access to unpublished material. Since each chapter in this book is a snapshot of particular people, the best way to acknowledge all of this help is chapter by chapter.
1. Dr Louis Péringuey’s well-travelled skeletons
I would like to thank Wendy Black, Wilhelmina Secunda, Liesl Ward and Lailah Hisham for permission to work on the Eugène Pittard files at the Iziko Museum and especially to Baheya Hardy and Lulama Noduma in the Social History Library. Marie Joseph O’Connor and Violette Kramer went way beyond the call of duty to help with translations from the original French. Tracking down information about Frank Shrubsall was especially difficult and Alexandra Browne, the archivist at Clare College, Cambridge, was most helpful.
2. Boskop: The first South African fossil human celebrity
The Boskop story involved tracking Louis Péringuey and Frederick FitzSimons in Cape Town and Port Elizabeth, respectively. Wendy Black, Wilhelmina Secunda, Liesl Ward and Lailah Hisham again helped with the correspondence files at the Iziko Museum. Nancy Teitz, Mike Raath, Dorothy Pittman and Emile Badenhorst all were exceptionally helpful in tracking down museum minutes, short biographies, newspaper articles and old pictures of the distinctive Mr FitzSimons. I am indebted to Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum in London for warnings about the current Boskop publicity and to Fred Grine for his comments on an earlier draft of the chapter.
3. Matthew Drennan and the Scottish influence in Cape Town
Writing anything about Matthew Drennan would not have been possible without the help of Caroline Powrie in the Department of Human Biology at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Caroline literally knew where the bodies were buried and helped me to find all the old boxes with the detritus of Drennan’s long sojourn in the department. She not only found the wonderful old pictures of Drennan, but also his boxes of newspaper clippings, manuscripts, letters and old articles. Michael Cassar and Charles Slater of UCT and Brendon Billings from the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) helped with information about cadavers. I very much appreciate Howard Phillips from the Department of History at UCT, who alerted me to John Goodwin’s relations with Keith Jolly and Drennan. Andrea Walker of UCT Libraries helped retrieve Goodwin’s letters. Vida Milovanovic of the Royal College of Surgeons archives in London and Malcolm MacCallum and Ruth Pollitt of the Anatomical Museum in Edinburgh helped with some of Drennan’s and Lawrence Wells’s letters in their collections. Vicky Gibbons of the Department of Human Biology at UCT kindly read an earlier draft of this chapter and helped with com