TECHNOLOGY
THE history of that branch of Ethnology which is concerned with the
handicrafts of man is very brief. Specimens of the arts and crafts of
various races had long been collected in museums, and till recent years
they were little more than curiosities or trophies; but, owing to the
inspiration of General Pitt-Rivers, they are now proofs of stages in the
evolution of human thought or handicraft, or links in a chain of
scientific argument indicating the migrations or contacts of peoples.
[Sidenote: =Pitt-Rivers.=]
Augustus H. Lane-Fox (1827-1900) served with distinction in the Crimea.
In 1851 he began to collect specimens to illustrate his views. This, it
will be remembered, was eight years before the publication of the
_Origin of Species_. So Lane-Fox was to all intents and purposes a
pre-Darwinian evolutionist. Few men have had the collecting instinct so
strongly developed, but there was invariably some principle or theory
that the objects he collected were designed to illustrate. The spoils of
over twenty years of intelligent collecting were exhibited in 1874 in
the Bethnal Green Museum. The collection was a revelation to students,
and was the first application of the theory of evolution to objects made
by man. Colonel Lane-Fox succeeded to vast estates in Wiltshire and
Dorsetshire in 1880, and assumed the name of Pitt-Rivers. The following
year he commenced the series of excavations on his estate which are
models of scientific “digging.” The Pitt-Rivers Museum at Oxford, and
that at Farnham in Dorsetshire, are fitting monuments of his genius. The
curator of the former museum, Mr. H. Balfour, is ably carrying on the
methods of Pitt-Rivers, and has made valuable investigations on the
evolution of musical and other implements.
Otis T. Mason (1838-1908), of the United States National Museum, paid
particular attention to the implements and processes of the technology
of backward peoples, more especially of the aborigines of North America;
and he was also interested in the wider aspects of human industrial
development.
Pitt-Rivers was certainly one of the first to demonstrate that patterns
and designs may be studied from the point of view of evolution; but he
did not make any detailed studies in this direction. The first
systematic treatise in this fascinating field of investigation was by
Dr. H. Colley March, who, in _The Meaning of Ornament_ (1889),[96]
utilised certain views put forward by Gottfried Semper in his valuable
book _Der Stil_ (1860-1863); but for over a decade the distinguished
Swedish archæologist and ethnologist, Dr. Hjalmar Stolpe (1841-1905),
had been amassing data to illustrate the evolution and distribution of
ornamentation, and he published a memoir on Polynesian art in 1890,
which was followed by one on American art in 1896. Dr. C. H. Read,[97]
Mr. H. Balfour (1893),[98] and others, worked on similar lines, and much
valuable research in this direction has also been accomplished by
American and German ethnologists.
Footnote 96:
_Trans. Lanc. and Cheshire Ant. Soc._, 1889.
Footnote 97:
_Journ. Anth. Inst._, xxi., 1891, p. 139.
Footnote 98:
_Evolution of Dec. Art._
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