What were the key contributions of 19th-century anthropologists?

19th-century anthropologists made several key contributions that shaped the development of the field and laid the foundation for modern anthropology. Some of their major contributions include:

1. Establishment of Anthropology as a Discipline:
   • Early anthropologists helped establish anthropology as a formal academic discipline, distinguishing it from other fields such as sociology, archaeology, and history. Figures like Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan were pioneers in the study of human societies and cultures.
2. Cultural Evolutionism:
   • Anthropologists like Edward Burnett Tylor and Lewis Henry Morgan promoted the theory of cultural evolutionism, which argued that human societies developed through a series of progressive stages. These stages were often seen as “savage,” “barbaric,” and “civilized.” This model was influential, though later critiqued for its Eurocentrism and ethnocentrism.
3. The Concept of Culture:
   • Tylor, in particular, is credited with defining “culture” as a complex whole, encompassing knowledge, belief, art, law, morals, customs, and any other capabilities or habits acquired by humans as members of society. His work laid the groundwork for the modern understanding of culture.
4. Fieldwork and Ethnographic Methods:
   • 19th-century anthropologists, particularly those influenced by Franz Boas (at the very end of the century), advanced the importance of fieldwork and participant observation as a method of studying cultures. While Boas’ contributions became more prominent in the early 20th century, his field-based approach began to take shape in the late 1800s, changing how anthropologists gathered data.
5. Kinship and Social Organization:
   • Lewis Henry Morgan made significant contributions to the study of kinship systems, developing theories about how kinship relationships were structured in different societies. He studied indigenous peoples in North America and formulated one of the first systems for classifying kinship relationships, which is still influential in the field today.
6. Comparative Method:
   • Anthropologists of this era used the comparative method to analyze and compare different cultures. They sought to identify similarities and differences among societies, often with the aim of understanding the development of human culture. This method also influenced other disciplines, like sociology.
7. The Development of Racial Theory:
   • Although now deeply criticized and debunked, the 19th century saw anthropologists and other scholars developing racial theories that classified humans into different races, often with the belief that some were superior to others. Figures like John Friedrich Blumenbach and Samuel George Morton contributed to racial typologies, though these ideas were later criticized for their pseudoscientific basis and harmful social consequences.
8. Prehistoric Archaeology:
   • 19th-century anthropologists, like Sir Mortimer Wheeler and Augustus Pitt Rivers, helped lay the foundation for archaeological methods. They were instrumental in excavating prehistoric sites and using material culture to understand early human history, which also influenced the development of the discipline of archaeology as a subfield of anthropology.