A HUNDRED YEARS OF ANTHROPOLOGY


Written by T. K. Penniman (curator of the Pitt Rivers Museum, Head of the Department of Ethnology and Prehistory and Diploma Secretary for Anthropology in the University of Oxford 1939-1963) with contributions by Beatrice Blackwood and J. S Weiner. Published by Gerald Duckworth & Co., London. Copyright 1965; “First Published in 1935” “Third Edition, Revised, 1965” is stated on the copyright page.


From the Pitt Rivers Museum (UK) website:

Thomas Kenneth Penniman is perhaps the least well known of all the senior staff that have ever worked at the Pitt Rivers Museum. This is strange because although he was not very well known internationally he did contribute a great deal to the Museum.

He was born in 1895 in New Hampshire, USA. He was brought up on a farm in the country. After graduating from Middlebury College in Vermont he applied for the Rhodes scholarship to Oxford. Although he was awarded the scholarship in 1917 he decided to enlist instead, not arriving at Oxford until 1919 when he read Greats.  After graduating he stayed on in Oxford working in a series of temporary jobs and studying for a Diploma in Anthropology, which he was awarded in 1928. That same year he visited Kish in Mesopotamia, as part of the Oxford-Field Museum Expedition and around the same time he took British citizenship.

For almost a decade after this Penniman continued to live in Oxford, doing a series of part-time or temporary jobs such as acting as secretary to the Committee for Anthropology and coaching students. In 1939 he finally got a career break when he was appointed as Henry Balfour’s deputy at the Museum during Balfour’s illness. After Balfour’s death in 1939 Penniman was appointed Director (or Curator as it was then known) and remained in post until 1963.

One of Penniman’s main contributions to the Museum was to create, with Beatrice Blackwood, the card catalogue index system, which still exists today. This labour took many years and was welcome distraction from the effects of the Second World War in the museum.

Penniman founded the so-called ‘Occasional Papers’ series whereby topics interesting to the Museum could be published and more widely disseminated. He appears to have been the first Curator to put forward formal plans to totally develop the Museum. It was his broad ideas that his successor, Bernard Fagg, developed into the plans for a new building on the Banbury Road. Penniman was deeply disappointed when these plans fell through.

Another interest was the musical instruments collections and he insisted that a large number of the musical instruments should be in playable condition (the collections are now a research collection rather than a playing one). He was a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries and of the Royal Anthropological Institute. His published work includes Spencer’s Last Journey (with R. R. Marett), 1931; Spencer’s Scientific Correspondence, 1932; and A Hundred Years of Anthropology, 1935.

From the dust jacket description:

Anthropology, the Science of Man, is also the study of the general environments in which man and his cultures have developed. It is linked with biology, geography, psychology, sociology, archaeology, ethnology and other specialist studies; and Mr. Penniman’s survey has already established itself as one of the few reliable attempts to review the progress of these varied sciences during the last century or so as part of a coherent developing whole.

DESCRIPTION:

397 pages

8 3/4 x 5 3/4 inches

Third Edition, hardcover with dustjacket

CONDITION:

This hard-cover book is in very good+ condition with a good+ dustjacket. The black cloth hardcover is very clean and shows only slight wear at the corners and spine ends. Other than two small thumbs-up stamps in the upper corners of the front endpapers, the interior is excellent with no names, marks, underlining, tears or odor. The paper is slightly toned with age. The hinges and binding are excellent with no loose or missing pages.

The dustjacket is very clean but worn at the corners. It has some chipping in the upper spine area—this area has been reinforced on the back with some tape that, as of yet, has not turned yellow. The price on the front flap has been cut.

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