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Grafton Elliot Smith, Egyptology & the Diffusion of Culture - A Biographical Perspective (Paperback, New)
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Grafton Elliot Smith, Egyptology & the Diffusion of Culture - A Biographical Perspective (Paperback, New)
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Grafton Elliot Smith rose from a colonial Australian background to
dizzying heights in the British scientific establishment. He became
a world authority on neuroanatomy and human prehistory, holding
chairs at Cairo, Manchester and University College, London. He was
best known publicly for his challenging theory of cultural
diffusion, crossing the boundaries of anthropology, archaeology and
history, stemming from his expert knowledge of evolution. Most
controversy raged about his "Egyptian" theory, which placed ancient
Egypt as the dynamic source from which major elements of
civilisation were spread by the migration of peoples and mores.
This vision stemmed from his ground-breaking dissection of
thousands of mummies in Egypt during the great excavations of the
1900s. His speculations, made in association with thinkers such as
W H R Rivers and W J Perry, bore fruit in a spate of publications
that sparked global debate, arousing particular anger from American
ethnologists opposed to ideas of foreign influence upon
Mesoamerican cultures. Elliot Smith's ideas were regarded at the
time as authentic, if problematic, approaches to important issues
in human history. They were subsequently to be caricatured or
ignored in anthropological and archaeological disciplines that had
moved on to other paradigms. Paul Crook shows how his ideas were
developed in the context of his life and times, examining the
debates they aroused, his attempts to incorporate anthropology
within a broader interdisciplinary school under his leadership in
London, and his opposition to Nazi race theory in the 1930s. There
has been no full-scale biography of Elliot Smith and little of
substance analysing his works. Despite shortcomings, his theory and
reputation deserve rehabilitation. An Afterword brings general
readers up to date about the whole "diffusion" debate.
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