Chapter 2
In: Brill's Companion to Classics and Early Anthropology
Search for other papers by Emily Varto in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Purchase instant access (PDF download and unlimited online access):
Abstract
Lewis Henry Morgan’s Ancient Society related human cultures to one another in a comparative and social evolutionary scheme, synthesizing ethnographic information drawn from several peoples, especially the Greeks, Romans, and Iroquois. The classics, however, informed Morgan’s Ancient Society beyond supplying such ethnographic information; they played key normative and hermeneutic roles throughout the whole work. The classical histories of George Grote and Barthold Georg Niebuhr, in particular, provided Morgan with comparative ethnographic details set in progressive frameworks. In Greek and Roman history, told in this way, he found normative institutions and a developmental hermeneutic of typologies. He employed these to interpret the results of his ethnography of North American aboriginal peoples. Classical norms, particularly, led Morgan to recognize the ethnological value of his observations about the “unique” matrilineal descent system of the Iroquois. Moreover, Morgan employed a developmental hermeneutic, inspired by nineteenth-century progressive classical histories, to situate and connect peoples (and their institutions and customs) in a grand ethnological scheme. This developmental hermeneutic, however, was also consciously shaped by his inquiries among the Iroquois and other aboriginal peoples of North America. Thus, Morgan’s American experience tinted the classical lens through which he observed the progress of all human civilizations.