Year: 1993
Type: article
Abstract: The career of Daniel Wilson (1816Wilson ( -1892)), the English-speaking world's first scientific archaeologist, embraced two continents and drew on his other skills as an artist, antiquarian, anthropologist, and university teacher.While Wilson's approach to archaeology was based on the work of the Scandinavian archaeologists Christian Thomsen and Jens Worsaae, his understanding of human behaviour was shaped by the popular culture of early 19th-century Edinburgh, especially the thinking of Scottish primitivists and Common Sense philosophers and the romanticism of Sir Walter Scott.Like 18th-century Enlightenment philosophers, Wilson believed in cultural evolution but retained a creationist view of human origins and regarded human nature as unchanging.He reluctantly accepted biological evolution, but his refusal to adopt an evolutionary view of the origin of the human mind led him to reject the racism that was introduced into studies of cultural evolution by Darwinians such as John Lubbock.By advocating the integration of aboriginal peoples into what he hoped would become a multiracial society in North America, Wilson continued to champion the concepts of the Enlightenment at a time when such ideals had become unfashionable.understand how and why these archaeologists interpreted their evidence as they did.Success also requires that we avoid presentism: imposing our own values on the past.
Author: Bruce G Trigger
Institutions: University of Toronto, McGill University
Language: English
Subfield: History and Philosophy of Science
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
Funder: Society of Antiquaries of London
OpenAlex ID: W4366961392