Dissent With Modification: Human Origins, Palaeolithic Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology in Britain 1859 1901
Year: 2010

J McNabb's (2012) Dissent with Modification: Human Origins, Palaeolithic Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology 1859 1901 explores discoveries and debates relating to human origins between the publication of Charles Darwin's (1859) On the Origin of Species and the death of Queen Victoria (1901) Beyond a summary of who found and said what when, the book seeks to contextualize archaeological, anthropological, and paleontological data in their broad intellectual and social contexts. McNabb explains that the book grew from an original focus on the 'eolith' controversy, more on which below, broadening into the complex nexus around this debate which took the author to the core of the emerging concept of the Paleolithic in Victorian times. While the book is wide ranging, it is motivated by a number of central themes (p. 3) These include the origin of Paleolithic archaeology as a discipline and its relationship with other academic foci, the concept of race and its role in evolutionary and historical narratives, the relationship between studies of human origins and climate change and, finally, public perceptions of such debates. It is a large and diverse book, so this review can only sketch broad outlines. After discussing the structure of the book, some examples of some of the book's major themes the idea of progress, the antiquity of humans, and the eolith debate will be discussed. The overall character of the book is a review and discussion of the published arguments of Victorian scholars, from the perspective of a modern archaeologist. A whole other story remains to be told in terms of unpublished arguments, such as those found in correspondence. Given the propensity of the Victorian gentleman to avoid argument and offence consider Darwin's (1859) scant discussion of human evolution in The Origin of Species, something certainly widely considered by the 'thinking public' of his time the published record presumably offers but a shadow of true opinions. McNabb opts to start with his conclusions, which are presented in Chapter 1. The rest of the book then consists of an explanation and expansion of these points. From this basis the book flows in a logical and broadly chronological fashion through the subject matter. Throughout the book, boxes provide summaries and definitions of key points and outlines of debates, providing useful accompaniments to the text. Simple graphs of the subjects of papers in various eminent journals are used to provide insights into the changing zeitgeist and a partial quantification of the points made by McNabb. The book is authoritatively but engagingly written and can be understood by someone with no previous knowledge of the subject area. A recurring theme throughout the book is the Victorian notion of progress. Changes in both biology and culture were seen as being unilinear and constantly improving. In the 19th century, narratives of change were typically presented in terms of 'race, reflecting, McNabb argues, both the lack of an alternative frame of reference and an extension of debates on slavery. In 1859, the geographical extent of the known Paleolithic consisted of southern England and northern France (p. 82) Soon afterwards this grew from the chalk area to the limestone regions of Britain, southern France, and Belgium. In the mid 1860's, Tyler (1865) could only offer two examples of Paleolithic type lithics from outside western Europe, both from the Middle East. In the absence of more evidence, spatial variation in modern ethnicity substituted for temporal variability. The philosophical concept of progress provided a theoretical framework. These issues remain important to modern scholars. The recognition of the role of contingency in the evolutionary process, such as the extermination of around 75% of species in the Cretaceous Tertiary extinction event, demonstrates that there is no straight line in evolution. A similar pattern seems to characterize the archaeological record. Despite this, the constant quest for the earliest, so beloved by the top journals be it in terms of fossils, blades, evidence for 'symbolism, etc. plays a significant role in the paleoanthropological literature. Once the earliest of something has been found interest often moves on elsewhere, yet there seem to have been all manner of evolutionary trajectories in the Paleolithic (e.g. Hovers and Kuhn 2006) Against a cyclical process of environmental change, particular features of material culture came and went. A focus on the earliest, particularly given frequently poor chronological control, is a problem today, and, in part, a reflection of the hangover of progressivism. Things today are at least not as extreme as they were in the past. McNabb provides the example of Harrison's (1880) claim that, given the existence of flintknapping for gun flints at Brandon in Norfolk, the local inhabitants represented a continuous population from the Neolithic onwards (p. 195) By Victorian times, the considerable age of the world was increasingly clear, but frustratingly imprecisely pinned down. Stratigraphic sequences could show relative chronology, and fossils offered some hope of correlations,