CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY i S9 



lion has been directed in England to the question of the part played by North Africa in 

 the propagation of culture in Neolithic times by Prof. G. Elliot Smith's ingenious piece of 

 synthetic work, The Ancient Egyptians and their influence on the civilisation of Europe 

 (1911). His point of departure is Reisner's theory that the utilisation of copper began 

 in Egypt ; and he suggests that one result of this was the spread of a taste for megalithic 

 architecture, which worked its way round by North Africa to Western Europe. As 

 regards other parts of Africa, prehistoric industries of a Neolithic facies are reported 

 from many points, for instance, from the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan by Mr. Wellcome 

 (Congres d'Anthrop. et d'Archeol. prehist., Geneva, 1912), and from Ashanti by Mr. 

 Rattray and others (H. Balfour in /. of the African Soc., Oct. 1912); whilst in South 

 Africa the latest discoveries range in type from Neolithic celts to amygdaloids of river- 

 drift pattern (J. P. Johnson, The Prehist. Period in S. Africa, 1910; L. Peringuey, " The 

 Stone Ages of S. Africa" in Annals of the S. Af. Mus., viii, 1911). The difficulty in re- 

 spect to the African evidence throughout is that geological and palaeontological data 

 are as yet not available for the determination of a chronological scale; whilst the back- 

 ward state of many of the natives makes it possible that primitive and advanced types 

 of stone-industry may have been more or less contemporary. Indeed, outside Europe 

 and the immediate neighbourhood of the Mediterranean, prehistoric archaeology can 

 scarcely boast the status of a quasi-independent interest, but tends to merge with 

 cultural anthropology in general. As for proto-history, it is coming more and more to 

 include the whole of the bronze-age and early-iron age cultures of Europe, as it already 

 does- those of Eastern Europe. How much we are beginning to know about the develop- 

 ment of bronze-age culture, even in so relatively backward a region as the British Is- 

 lands, may be learnt from an admirable monograph, A Study of the Bronze Age Pottery 

 of Great Britain and Ireland, and its associated Grave-goods (1912), by the Hon. J. Aber- 

 cromby, who ascribes its introduction to invaders, mainly of Alpine stock, who had 

 moved gradually from some region beyond the Rhine, not far north of Helvetia. 



Ethnological Method. When we turn to the consideration of cultural anthropology 

 as it concerns itself with the primitive peoples of modern times, we can hardly expect to 

 encounter dramatic surprises such as are occurring almost daily in the field of pre- 

 historics. There are nowadays but few spaces on the ethnological map that are ab- 

 solutely blank. If travellers' gossip is to count, we can claim to have covered most of 

 the ground. On the other hand, there is to be noted on all sides a demand for intensive 

 study that, from the standpoint of science, is a most striking and welcome sign of the 

 times. It has become clear by experience that theory based on the observations of un- 

 trained and unguided field-workers comes to nothing. The endowment of anthropologi- 

 cal research in connection with universities and government departments and the 

 organisation of ethnographical museums have created a body of workers intent on ob- 

 taining accurate results. Hence interest now centres chiefly in questions of method. 

 In England attention has been called to this subject by Dr. W. H. R. Rivers in a master- 

 ly paper entitled " The ethnological analysis of Culture " (Pres. Address to Section H., 

 Brit. Ass., Portsmouth, 1911). He there contrasts two methods, which he terms several- 

 ly the psychological and the ethnological. The former rests on the tacit assumption of 

 a general homogeneity of the human mind, and hence tends to explain such similarities 

 as are found in different regions as due to the similarity of its workings; so that, given 

 similar conditions, similar customs and institutions will develop along the same lines. 

 The latter explains these similarities as due to the direct transmission of culture from 

 one people to another. This new method is upheld in its most extreme form by F. 

 Graebrier, Methode der Ethnologic, Heidelberg, 1911 (compare his article " Die melane- 

 sische Bogenkultur und ihre Verwandten," Anthropos, 1909, iv, 726), who is herein 

 supported by W. Foy (under whose editorship the annual Ethnologica is devoted to the 

 illustration of this method) and, with certain restrictions, by Pater W. Schmidt (Mitt. 

 d. anthrop. Gesellsch. in Wien, 1908, xxxviii, 73; and Denksch. d. Akad. d. Wiss. W.ien, 

 Phil. -hist. K.I., 1910, liii). All German anthropologists, however, are not adherents of 

 this school, as will be evident from the discussions published in Petermann's Mitt. I. 113 



