Chapter 3
In: Brill's Companion to Classics and Early Anthropology
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Abstract
This chapter explores how the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor integrated evidence from the ancient world into his most well-known work Primitive Culture (1871) and how his ideas about culture influenced early theories of Romanization. Tylor’s study of classics shaped how he entered one of the preeminent anthropological debates of his time: what is “culture” and do cultures progress towards civilization, degenerate towards savagery, or do both at different times? He famously defined culture as a holistic concept consisting of belief, art, laws, morals, etc., and he promoted an evolutionary theory of culture, which viewed cultures as progressing from a savage to civilized state with ‘survivals’ that could persist across stages. His evolutionary and more material ideas about culture, which drew on classical scholarship as well as ancient Greek and Latin texts, were broadly influential and, in turn, shaped the development of scholarship about the ancient world. Here, F. J. Haverfield and R. G. Collingwood—both based in Oxford around the same time that Tylor was—serve as case studies for the legacy of Tylor’s theories in so-called Romanization studies. Haverfield’s notion of a superior, comprehensive Roman culture that unilaterally spread throughout the provinces and his idea that aspects of ‘native’ culture could survive both seem in dialogue with Tylor’s ideas. More explicitly, Collingwood’s writings indicate that he was familiar with Tylor’s work and that he added nuance to Tylor’s ideas in promoting his own fusion model of Romanization. Tylor’s progressive theory of culture, refracted through Haverfield and Collingwood as well as more recent scholars, has a legacy in today’s studies of cultural change in the Roman provinces. Excavating the history of the term can, therefore, help us refine current approaches to questions raised in these studies.