William Boyd Dawkins & the Victorian Science of Cave Hunting
Three Men in a Cavern
William Boyd Dawkins is an immensely fascinating character, who dominated British geology throughout his time, and but is usually forgotten at present. He acquired a professorship and a knighthood, together with many prime awards, and but Mark Wright, on this wonderful biography, describes him as “a liar and doubtless a cheat”.
During the Victorian age, work started on excavating caves in an effort to start to know the Pliocene and Pleistocene (and, particularly, the presence of early man at these occasions), and Dawkins was on the forefront of those efforts. He was concerned in lots of excavations through which large numbers of animal bones and flint instruments have been found, and, by way of his books and self-promotion, turned well-known in doing so. However, his strategies have been, even by Victorian requirements, slapdash and he relied closely on reminiscence relatively than his notebooks, which, tellingly, tended to report his bills slightly than the related details of the dig. When confronted by teachers, he lied, blustered, bullied and referred to the authority of others quite than information. He obtained issues terribly mistaken and but he was undoubtedly a hit. Importantly, within the excavation of Robin Hood Cave in Cresswell by him and others, two finds have been made – considered one of a sabre-toothed cat tooth and the opposite a carved bone with an image of a horse – which induced a scientific controversy that signifies that, to the extent that Dawkins is remembered immediately, he’s implicated scientific fraud.
Mark White’s protection of the life and occasions of William Boyd Dawkins tries to untangle this unusual character. Clearly a liar, he was additionally a person of social conscience (however the apparent superiority he felt in the direction of the working courses) and was immensely widespread with this pals, if not his enemies. Such contradictions make this an interesting learn. In reality, I completely loved studying this guide because it strikes in the direction of a denouement of the scandal.
The writer is Professor of Palaeolithic Archaeology at Durham University, specialising within the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of Britain and within the historical past of Palaeolithic archaeology; and has written many articles and books on these subjects.
William Boyd Dawkins & the Victorian Science of Cave Hunting: Three Men in a Cavern by Mark Wright, Pen and Sword Books Limited, Barnsley (2017). 302 pp., hardback, ISBN: 978-B-47382-335-H
Filed beneath: books Tagged: Cave Hunting, Victorian 
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