July 29, 1920] 



NATURE 



685 



Obituary. 



Dr. Robert Muxro. 



WE regret to record the death, on July i8, of 

 Dr. Robert Munro, the well-known Scottish 

 archaeolog-ist. Dr. Munro was born on July 21, 

 1835, ^"d was thus within three days of complet- 

 ing his eig-hty-fifth year. By his death prehistoric 

 archaeology loses one of its foremost exponents 

 in this country ; but his work will not readily be 

 forgotten. 



Munro was educated at Tain Royal Academy 

 and at Edinburgh University. After practising 

 medicine for some years at Kilmarnock, of which 

 town his wife was a native, his increasing interest 

 in archaeology led him to retire in 1886, in order 

 to devote himself entirely to research in this 

 branch of science. His name will always be asso- 

 ciated in particular with the study of prehistoric 

 lake and pile dwellings, a subject to which his 

 attention was first directed in 1878, while on a 

 visit to Zurich, when he took the opportunity of 

 examining the prehistoric lake dwellings in the 

 neighbourhood. Shortly after his return, the dis- 

 covery of two canoes and wrought wood by work- 

 men engaged in drainage work on the estate of 

 the Duke of Portland at Locklee, Tarbolton, Ayr- 

 shire, suggested the possibility of fruitful results 

 to be obtained from investigations on analogous 

 sites in Scotland. 



At the instigation of Mr, R. W. Cochran- 

 Patrick, Munro undertook the exploration 

 of this site, and in the two following years he 

 investigated similar sites at Friar's Carse, Loch- 

 spouts, and Buston, all in the south-west of 

 Scotland. Accounts of these investigations were 

 published from time to time in the collections of 

 the Ayrshire and Wigtownshire Archaeological 

 Association, and a report on the excavation of the 

 crannog at Friar's Carse appeared in the Pro- 

 ceedings of the Society of Antiquaries of Scot- 

 land, of which body Munro had been elected a 

 fellow in 1879. The results were afterwards 

 embodied in "Ancient Scottish Lake Dwellings," 

 published in 1882, a book which, as the author 

 said in his preface, sought "to place before the 

 general reader a record of some remarkable dis- 

 coveries recently made in the south-west of 

 Scotland in a department of archaeology hitherto 

 little known." In addition to giving the results 

 of his own excavations, he summarised the some- 

 what scanty accounts of previous investigators in 

 this field in Scotland, and the work of Boyd 

 Dawkins and others in England. 



After the appearance of this work, Munro's 

 interest turned in an increasing degree to Conti- 

 nental prehistoric sites. Always a great lover of 

 travel — he considered it his only form of recrea- 

 tion — he visited most of the important sites in 

 Europe. Papers dealing with prehistoric remains 

 in Holland, Denmark, Italy, Carinthia, and else- 

 where appearing in the Proceedings of the 

 Society of Antiquaries of Scotland and in other 

 publications in the early 'eighties, and a book 

 NO. 2648, VOL. 105] 



describing a journey in Bosnia, Herzegovina, and 

 Dalmatia published in 1895, bear witness to the 

 extent of his travels and investigations. The 

 publications of the earlier years were, however, 

 merely a by-product while he was collecting the 

 material for his most important work, "The Lake 

 Dwellings of Europe," published in 1890, of which 

 the substance had been given in his Rhind 

 Lectures, delivered in 1888. In this book Munro 

 made a complete survey of the subject, dealing in 

 particular with the problems of the Swiss lake 

 dwellings and the terramare settlements of Italy. 

 In 1907, seventeen years after its publication, 

 M. Salomon Reinach, in a preface to Modestov's 

 "Introduction k I'histoire romaine," said of it: 

 "II n'y a qu'un livre recent sur les stations 

 lacustres et les terramares de I'ltalie; il a et6 

 ecrit en anglais par un Ecossais. " A French 

 edition appeared in 1908. 



The results of subsequent discoveries, and in 

 particular of discoveries on the terramare of 

 Emilia, were embodied in the second part of 

 "Palaeolithic Man and Terramare Sites of 

 Europe," published in 1912. This matter had 

 formed the Dalrymple Lectures on Archaeology 

 in the University of Glasgow in 191 1; while the 

 first part, which summarised our knowledge of 

 palaeolithic man at that date, had been delivered 

 as the Munro Lectures in Anthropology in 1912, 

 being the first course after the institution of the 

 lectureship by the University of Edinburgh, In 

 addition to the works already mentioned, Munro 

 was the author of several other books, including 

 "Prehistoric Problems" (1897), "Prehistoric 

 Scotland and its Place in European Civilisation " 

 {1899), "Archaeology and False Antiquities" 

 (1905), "Prehistoric Britain" {1914), a popular 

 summary, and a number of papers which appeared 

 at various dates in the Proceedings of learned 

 societies and elsewhere. 



In 1886 Munro's freedom from professional 

 duties enabled him to undertake the secretaryship 

 of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, an 

 office which he held until 1899. In 1893 he was 

 president of the Anthropological Section of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of 

 Science, and in 1903 he delivered one of the 

 evening discourses at the meeting of the 

 association at Southport, This discourse was pub- 

 lished in 1904 under the title "Man as Artist and 

 Sportsman in the Palaeolithic Period." In 1894 

 he was appointed chairman of the research com- 

 mittee instituted in that year to conduct excava- 

 tions on the site of the lake village at Glastonbury, 

 other members of the committee being Sir John 

 Evans, Gen.. Pitt-P.ivers, and Prof. W. Boyd 

 Dawkins. More fortunate than two of his famous 

 colleagues, Munro lived to see the completion 

 of this important work in 1907, and continued to 

 act as chairman when the committee's investiga- 

 tions were turned to the Meare lake village. He 

 was part author of the monograph describing the 



