Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dlnhk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:55:32.949Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Raymond Dart and the danger of mentors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Robin Derricourt
Robin Derricourt*
Affiliation:
*School of History and Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney 2052, Australia
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Archaeology, like all scientific and scholarly disciplines, requires the transmission of knowledge and ideas. This commonly involves the influence of mentors and role models: figures who can at times take on the role of gurus. But adherence to mentors has its dangers. That is shown in the career of Raymond Dart, whose professional work was deeply flawed by the adherence he paid to his mentor Grafton Elliot Smith. His status has been maintained by his dedicated disciple, the great physical anthropologist Phillip Tobias, but critical assessment of the corpus of Dart’s work (Dubow 1996; Derricourt 2009) contrasts with his selective reputation.

In the first part of 1925, Dart — then a youthful professor of anatomy in Johannesburg — published in quick succession two papers in the pre-eminent British science journal Nature.One (on the discovery of Australopithecus with the announcement and interpretation of the Taung fossil cranium) would become a landmark document in the history of palaeoanthropology and prehistory (Dart 1925a). The other is a classic example of the approaches which would later be seen as belonging in the lunatic fringe of archaeology. Dart would continue publishing on both themes throughout his long and productive life (from his birth in Australia in 1893 to death in Johannesburg in 1988).

Type
Debate
Information
Antiquity , Volume 84 , Issue 323 , March 2010 , pp. 230 - 235
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Burkitt, M. 1928. South Africa's past in stone and paint. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Daniel, G. 1964. The idea of prehistory. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Dart, M. 1968. Raymond A. Dart —list of publications 1920–1967. South African Journal of Science 64: 134–140.Google Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1925a. Australopithecus africanus: the man-ape of South Africa. Nature 115: 195–199.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1925b. The historical succession of cultural impacts upon South Africa. Nature 115: 425–429.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1929. The South African negro. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 13: 309–318.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1937. Racial origins, in Schapera, I. (ed.) Bantu-speaking tribes of South Africa: an ethnographic survey: 1–37. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1951. African serological patterns and human migrations. Claremont: South African Archaeological Society.Google Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1952. A Hottentot from Hong Kong. South African Journal of Medical Science 17: 117–142.Google ScholarPubMed
Dart, R.A. 1957. The osteodontokeratic culture of Australopithecus prometheus. Pretoria: Transvaal Museum.Google Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1972. Associations with and impressions of Sir Grafton Elliot Smith. Mankind 8: 171–175.Google Scholar
Dart, R.A. 1974. Cultural diffusion from, in and to Africa, in Elkin, A.P. & Macintosh, N.W.G..(ed.) Grafton Elliot Smith: the man and his work: 160–174. Sydney: Sydney University Press.Google Scholar
Dart, R.A. & Craig, D.. 1959. Adventures with the missing link. London: Hamish Hamilton.Google Scholar
Dawson, W.R. (ed.). 1938. Sir Grafton Elliot Smith: a biographical record by his colleagues. London: Cape.Google Scholar
Derricourt, R. 2009. The enigma of Raymond Dart. International Journal of African Historical Studies 42: 257–282.Google Scholar
Drower, M. 1985. Flinders Petrie. London: Gollancz.Google Scholar
Dubow, S. 1996. Human origins, race typology and the other Raymond Dart. African Studies 55: 1–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, A.J.H. & Van Riet Lowe, C.. 1929. The Stone Age cultures of South Africa. Cape Town: South African Museum.Google Scholar
Smith, G.E. 1911. The ancient Egyptians and the origin of civilization. London: Harper.Google Scholar
Smith, G.E. 1933. The diffusion of culture. London: Watts.Google Scholar
Tobias, P.V. 1968. Homage to Emeritus Professor R.A. Dart on his 75th birthday. South African Journal of Science 64: 42–50.Google Scholar
Tobias, P.V. 1974. The biology of the Southern African negro, in Hammond-Tooke, W.D. (ed.) The Bantu-speaking peoples of Southern Africa: 3–45. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Tobias, P.V. 1984. Dart, Taung and the missing link. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press.Google Scholar
Tobias, P.V. 1989. Raymond Arthur Dart (1893–1988). Nature 33: 211.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tobias, P.V. 2005. Into the past: a memoir. Johannesburg: Picador Africa.Google Scholar
Wheelhouse, F. & Smithford, K.S.. 2001. Dart: scientist and man of grit. Sydney: Transpareon Press.Google Scholar